Down Below
by Nocens
Summary: Peace is not peace for soldiers who can not lay down their guns.When will the world learn that you don't mess with fire unless you want to be burned? NCS violence 1x2, 1x2x5 Yaoi
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: See 'Watching'

A/N: I just couldn't keep this from spilling from my fingers and even if it woul dmean another slow-coming story I'm prepared to face your anger, even more so because I need to know if you enjoy this beginning.

It is my first try at GW fiction and I'm not very secure it is a good one. :)

Unbetaed. Beware of bad grammar.

That said - On with the fic!

Chapter 1

I woke up feeling the familiar sour taste in my mouth and to the pounding of my head that signified another hangover. What the fuck did I drink last night? Groaning I slipped, more like stumbled, out of bed and made a beeline for the bathroom. Do you know how good a cool shower feels when you feel like your brain is trying to escape your head by bashing its way out of your scull? I sighed and let the water cascade down my skin making me feel like something more than a zombie that was running on the last of its batteries and return some feeling to my numb skin. Alcohol does that when consumed in large quantities – it numbs you, but before that its one hell of a mood-maker especially when consumed in a good company.

"Duo?" I've always liked the way Heero doesn't shout trough the door on mornings like this. Instead he talks loudly but that's ok with me – it doesn't make my head ring like a shout would.

"Yeah?" Urgh! My voice sounds like…well I couldn't say. It's has that unique croaking, abused quality that is common to all loud drunks around the world and the colonies.

"Hurry up. Une just called. We've got a fire"

I groaned and let my head hit the wall then stumbled back. Fuck! That was a mistake. Groaning again and holding my head, hoping it won't fall of my shoulders, I turned the water off and using the walls for support I stepped out of the shower. Keeping a precocious balance I made my way to the cabinet on the other side of the thankfully rather small bathroom.

Aspirin! I think I even managed to grin a little but I didn't wipe off the mirror unwilling to see myself in it. Sweet, sweet salvation! How many could I take before poisoning myself again? Nevermind. I uncapped the bottle and shook a few into my palm then gulped them down without water.

I don't know exactly how I managed to get to the kitchen without stumbling but I was rather proud of myself. Heero didn't even glance my way as he handed me a cup of coffee. The smell of freedom someone had once said and I wholeheartedly agree.

"Thanks" my voice was still rough but it was getting better.

I sipped the black beverage of life and sighed as I dropped into one of the high chairs that were on the kitchen bar. It made my stomach turn a little but I suppressed it. I watched as Heero finished cooking breakfast – eggs and toast – but my stomach rebelled at the mere thought of food.

Predicting my lack of appetite Heero had cooked breakfast only for him so he took it off the stove and into a dish then sat down next to me. Feeling nauseated by the smell I slowly stood up and went to fill my cup for the second time. Heero had once said in a moment of wisdom that I am a coffee addict. Truer words hadn't been spoken, let me tell you. I needed at least two cups in the morning to feel human again, well as human as I could anyway.

When I turned Heero was watching me with an amused half-smile and I realized I had a stupid grin on my face. I tried to scowl at him but my damned head hurt too much. I'll get back on him later when my mind was rid of the fuzz. Instead I remembered he'd said something about a fire.

"You said something about a fire?" I sipped my coffee against the counter.

He nodded.

"We've got to be at HQ in an hour for briefing" the bastard still had that evil smile on. If he wasn't twice my strength and if I wasn't with a Gundam-sized hangover I would have wiped it off painfully.

Then my mind caught on with what he'd said. An hour?

"Fuck!" I cursed out loud as I gulped the last of my coffee squashing down the urge to gag as I put the cup in the sink before running to my room. I was putting on my shoulder holster when I heard Heero in front of my door.

"And Duo?"

"What?" I grumbled checking my Colt's mag. Fully loaded. Good, I was looking forward to emptying it in something alive.

"Do get some clothes on" he said and walked away to his room

I paused and looked down to see I was still in my bath towel. Cursing I glared at the door and went to my wardrobe to get my Preventer uniform out.

Ohhhh! I'll get you Yuy! You just wait you smug bastard!

We walked into Preventers HQ with me in the lead, scowling and snarling at the poor guards who tried to make me show my identification. Admittedly this was usually Heero's job but this morning I couldn't care less. So he walked after me, his usual expressionless face on and made sure the guards I had dismissed didn't raise an alarm. But I could see his amusement. Yeah, so what if I played the Bastard for once? Well to be honest his real nick-name at work was 'Ice Prince' but I couldn't be bothered by details at this point.

A few other, lower ranking agents stepped out of my way as I stormed down the corridors of HQ. Why did people have to choose the morning I was having one of my worst hangovers to launch a rebellion? I was going to kill the bastards slowly and with great pleasure.

I burst into the briefing room with Heero not a second behind me.

"Can you be a little louder Maxwell?"

"Shut it Wuffers! I'm not in the mood"

Wufei's eyebrows lifted and he looked me up and down. I gave him the finger and plopped down in one of the chairs. I swear my brain should enter the circus with Trowa judging from the somersaults it was doing.

I saw Wufei look at Heero who gave him a steady look but didn't say anything before looking away.

"What's wrong with you Maxwell?" he said frowning at me

"None of your business Wuffers" I really wasn't that snappy normally. What had I drunk last night again?

He frowned some more then looked closely at me.

"Are you…hung-over?" for a man who drank only tea Wufei was strangely perceptive about these things.

I threw him a glare and sniffed refusing to answer. Really, what was there to answer?

"I can't believe you Maxwell!" he finally said glaring at me.

Feeling a rant coming on I decided to kill it before it had the time to grow into one of his famous tirades.

"Yeah I'm hung over. Now shut up Fei! My head is in enough pain as it is!"

"You deserve it you…"

"He'll be able to do his duty Chang" Heero cut in calmly but firmly.

Wufei paused and looked to Heero then back to me, huffed and sat back in his chair. How did he manage to keep that uptight image even when he went off like some girl? An image of Relena flashed trough my mind and I cringed. Ok maybe not the pink wearing, stalking kind of girl then.

I sometimes wonder what made Heero not shoot the menace back in the war. I swear if she'd been stalking me, she'd have long ago been fish-food.

"Are you…Ok Maxwell?" Wufei was looking at me like I was a five-year old kid holding a bloody knife. Now where did that comparison come from? I swear my mind works in mysterious ways.

I snorted at the thought and saw Wuffers look a bit alarmed. Not that another would have noticed but fighting a war with him and the others taught me to read them quite well.

He was still looking at me and I looked back.

"Duo stop grinning like a lunatic" I turned to look at Heero and frowned. What?

"You were grinning like you'd just seen a fleet of OZ suits"

Oh, OH! I smiled sheepishly at him then at Wufei. Heh, I guess Heero knew me too well.

"Good morning agents"

And here comes Lady Psychotic Bitch herself. And he called me a lunatic! I swear the only thing creepier than Une in one of her moods is Heero in a pink tutu. I strangled the laughter that bubbled at the thought but I still got looks from Wufei and Heero. One suspicious and the other amused. Now that I knew Heero had an imagination, and what a fucking weird thing that was, I knew he could probably get the way my mind worked better than anyone.

I grumbled a belated good morning but the Lady didn't pause as she gave us out disks with the mission info.

"The Gulf fractions have joined forces and attacked the Preventers' office in Ankara. They've taken over the building and are holding civilians hostage. All the information you need is on the disk. You leave in thirty minutes from deck five. Good luck"

She didn't need to say more before she exited the room and left us to prepare. I popped the disk in and looked at the screen.

So far there were five dead Preventers and two dead civilians, a code red then. I tried to keep the grin off my face. Ah the fun we'll have!

I secretly looked up and saw Heero looking at his screen in concentration. His long bangs fell into his eyes and shadowed them but I could see the glow of the monitor reflect off them in the dim room making them look like two chips of ice. I knew my buddy was as eager as me. I only hope Wuffers didn't give us any problems. He had that strange habit of trying to get them alive, so what if orders were to bring them back for questioning? We could do that and a recording was good enough. He hadn't worked with me and Hee-man since we'd become a team so I didn't know what to expect.

I think Commander Une sends him just because of the hostages. Heero wasn't in the habit of taking into account such small nuisances as a hundred innocent if they were between him and his mission and neither was I. If they lived – they lived, if they got blown or shot – acceptable losses to keep the peace.

I blinked at the screen then growled at it making Wufei look up at me strangely. What? The damned soon to be trash thing was too bright and my eyes hurt all the way to the back of my head.

Without looking up Heero knew just the kind of vengeful expression that promised it a very short existence from that moment on that I was giving the screen because he said just one word.

"Taipan?"

I growled again but this time at Heero. What was he? A damned psychic? I had just remembered what I drank last night.

"Taipan." he stated and I felt like hitting something, preferably him. Wufei, who was looking from me to him with a strange expression wouldn't know but that was Heero's way of saying I told you so. I repeat myself – smug bastard.

"Fuck you too Heero"

I swear Wufei's eyebrows were the most mobile I've ever seen. Was it possible for them to climb all the way to his hairline? He looked at Heero like he was expecting him to calmly reach over and strangle me but in stead he got the shock of his life seeing Heero's smirk.

"Whatever you say Duo" and his voice was still that calm all-Heero one. One of these days, Heero, one of these days…you're going to make a mistake and Shinigami shall dance on your shameful defeat. Ok, maybe I'll just laugh in his face and tease him a little, not like he'd care anyway. Guessing what gave me a hangover was some kind of amusement to him but he could live without it. So why did he torture me? Sadist.

Wufei turned to Heero and I looked out of the corner of my eye.

"Do I...even want to know?"

Heero didn't pause but shrugged. Good boy I swear if he tells Wufei I'm going to have to kill him after I gut Fei for laughing.

"What is Taipan?" asked Wufei deciding to press on. Now Heero, be a good boy…

"A cocktail" …and be very careful what you say from here on…

"Ah" Wufei seemed interested.

"It's the reason for Duo's hangover" Hee-babe? Why don't you go self-destruct before I do it for you? I reeealy wanted to tackle Wufei as he snorted a laugh.

"And what is it?"

"Three parts vodka, one part blackberry juice and a drop of Taipan venom"

Wufei's smile chilled and he looked at me like I was alien. So what if I liked living my live dangerously?

"What?" I was feeling a bit defensive. It's my favorite drink!" It's a small drop!"

"You are aware that the Taipan is one of the deadliest snakes, aren't you Maxwell?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"And you willingly drink its poison…" he seemed at a lost for words. Now that he put it that way…what the hell was wrong with one itsy bitsy drink?

"Uh, yeah…"

"Has anyone ever told you you're insane Maxwell?"

I grinned, I couldn't resist.

"Oh yeah, Heero says it at least ten times a day" I said nodding convincingly and giving him the wide innocent eyes

He looked at me a little more then at Heero who was seemingly paying us no attention, shook his head and went back to his screen.

Just stick around Wuffers, you ain't seen nothing yet.

How much blood was there in a body? Gah, stupid pig ruining my uniform. I kicked the body again for a good measure. Can't even die like a normal person! Nooo! He just had to stumble like a headless chicken well he was headless but not a chicken, and spray blood everywhere.

I stepped over what had once been a soldier of the rebellion and unhooked the wire from the door, idiotic really but rather effective. People don't expect to be decapitated when they rush in a room. Take that Heero!

I pressed my ear piece and exited the room already having put the wire away.

"That's ten for me Hee-koi" it was a secure line of course. Wuffers wouldn't be able to hear us. We always set one up when we had to work with others 'cause it ruined the fun if they interfered in our game. It was private.

There was silence then

"Eleven" was all he said and I felt my grin broaden. C'mon Shinigami, time to really hit 'em.

I slipped out of the room on the first floor and started on the stairs with my back against the wall. Come to Shinigami sweeties!

A movement in the corner ahead and I ducked, my itching trigger finger already tightening. I eased up again and neared the fallen body. Two wounds in the chest. Unsheathing my knife I slashed his neck then suppressed my laughter. Do you know how funny it is the sound they make when they die? It's when the blood runs into the airways and it makes that gurgling sound – hilarious. And it also made Shinigami feel…just feel. It was far better than the opposite.

Eleven equal.

I noticed movement in one of the doors further down the hall. You should know that grinning too widely can make your cheeks ache. Mine still do after all those years - you'd think they'd get used to Shinigami's grins.

Wufei was scowling so fiercely and cursing so colorfully in mandarin that the hostages that were huddled together around the room had edged away from him. But he did have a right to let his temper run. If the poor excuse of a soldier that had sprang from where he'd hidden while Wufei took care if his comrades hadn't by pure blind luck hit his com he would probably be already out of the building. His eyes darted to the sniffing woman that had her face buried in some man's chest while said man looked like a kicked puppy and decided that that soldier had deserved his death.

He looked the station over again and opened the back panel. He'd already cleared the floor and only had to contact Heero and Duo to make sure the exit route was safe before getting the civilians out. He concentrated on the wiring of the com. The bullet had luckily only cut trough some wires but not trough the delicate piece that was essentially the heart of the gadget. His eyes flickered to the sniffing woman again.

"Madam I need your hairpins" he said briskly

The woman barely looked up and nodded quickly removing them from her bun and gave them to him with a trembling hand. Snatching them out of her stretched hand he nodded, not caring she won't see, and went back to the entrance where he was far enough for them not to overhear and was at also a strategic point from where he could defend them in the unlikely event that enemies appeared.

Using two of the pins he managed to somehow connect the cut wires and used the third to try and get the frequency of Preventers. There was some static and he moved the pin. For a minute he couldn't find anything then a crackle told him he'd caught a channel. Concentrating he slowly moved the pin so he wouldn't miss it.

"…strikes again! Eighteen to fifteen Hee-koi! I've got your ass whooped!"

Wufei physically reeled back as he heard the long-haired agent's voice. He looked at the radio and wondered if he hadn't imagined the cheerful but sharp as a knife voice and the chilling laugh that accompanied it. Perhaps he was having flashbacks from the war that were making him hear Duo's voice the way it had sounded back in the wars when the annoying pilot had fell on OZ suits like Death itself?

"Seventeen"

He frowned as he clearly heard Heero's voice say a single word and shaking his head removed the shock from his system. Seventeen what? He moved the pin and pressed the piece behind his ear.

"Agent Yuy, agent Maxwell this is agent Chang do you copy?"

He moved the pin again and waited for a response. His body was tense and his nerves on edge. He'd have preferred to have these people to safety already and this strange exchange between his fellow agents didn't help him feel at ease. The com crackled and he heard Duo's voice again, it sounded a bit breathless but as Quatre had once described it while they were still Gundam pilots – bloodthirstily cheerful.

"Twenty-two down and the floor is clear! Ha! Beat that Perfect soldier!" he didn't know why but Wufei imagined Duo dancing a small jig. He shook his head savagely to get he image of a blood-soaked Shinigami dancing on a pile of dead bodies.

It seemed that they were counting enemies captured.

"Nineteen…" Wufei could only look at the innocent com in his hands as he heard Heero's voice accompanied by two shots" Twenty…" a shout and a thump then machinegun fire, another three shots" Twenty-one…"

"Hee-koi… You fucking bastard! You always…"

There was the sound of more machinegun fire and five more shots" Twenty…" Duo cut in" Three, yeah I know. You do that to annoy me, don't you?"

"Yes" was the simple answer but it wasn't in the calm tone that Heero used so far. It was tinted with satisfaction.

"You know I'm going to make you pay for this as soon as we're alone, don't you Heero?" Duo's voice had a definite leer and a strong promise.

Wufei blinked twice when he heard Heero laugh, actually laugh on the other side of the com.

"I'm looking forward to it Duo"

Ripping his earpiece off he quickly put away the ruined com and stood.

"The route is secure. We are going to exit the building now" he said loudly catching the hostages' attention" I want you to move in a single line in pairs and follow me" he finished turning on his heel and exiting the room, stepping over the body of the soldier who'd shot his com. The hostages slowly followed taking care to pass as further away from the body as possible.

Damned Heero! But then again I had beaten him last time so…damn! I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't change my name and let him keep Shinigami himself, the Perfect Soldier seems to be dealing death as well as me. But …I won't. My connection to death is so much more intimate. She's my mother, my sister and my lover; always there to whisper in my ear, giving me ghost touches but unwilling embrace me. You could say I am attached to her and her to me.

I walked down the corridor and down the stairs. I had taken second floor while Heero had taken the third while the hostages had been held on the fourth. Scratching an itch on my cheek I decided that that was why Heero got more. When we sneaked in we cleaned the first floor together making the rats scatter and climb on the higher floors so it's logical Heero would get more. I nodded to myself as I exited the building from the front door.

I just had to smirk.

About sixty men had been lined outside and had been trying to break inside for the last ten hours when we got there. We had the men divert the terrorists' attention, I had to laugh at that – terrorists indeed, while us three top Preventer agents infiltrated the facility and in twenty minutes cleaned it out.

Thinking about how three of us took care of a fire that had been burning for ten hours before that made me remember the third of our party. Wuffes hadn't contacted us after one point in the mission but I wasn't too worried. I just wanted to be sure.

"Duo" I looked up from my musings to see an expressionless Heero. I felt my eyebrow quirk as I saw his state.

His Preventer jacket was missing as he was in his green tank-top and jeans which he'd made Une allow him to wear for field work just as I had made her let me wear my black. It wasn't this familiar way of dressing though that caught my attention. No, it was the fact that his top was ripped across the middle and that he had an unconscious man thrown over his shoulder.

"Ok, I knew you were desperate for a date but this isn't the way Soldier boy"

I saw him scowl briefly at me them his face was set in his usual blank state. I liked it when he did that - it made the fact that he showed more of himself in private to me all the more valued. I grinned at him then turned to the side as I felt someone approach us.

I stared at the scared lieutenant whose eyes were flying over me and Heero to the unconscious man.

"Ah, Agents Yuy, Maxwell" he started nervously and I grinned at him though that seemed to put him more on edge" I am to retrieve the captured suspects…" he finished lamely.

I don't know why but I feel this intense sense of satisfaction when men who are older and larger than me cower at my sight. Ouch! Hee-man you've got a very sharp elbow that doesn't feel good in my ribs!

"Is…" the man's eyes were on Heero trying to ignore me as I rubbed my side and scowled at Heero murmuring the ways I was going to remove the elbow and the attached arm" Is this man a…"

"He's our date for the night!" I said cheerfully evading Heero's hand as it reached out to deliver a punch and blew him a raspberry making the lieutenant look at me with almost the same look Fei had this morning, only his was scared.

Before I could continue to play with the man Heero unceremoniously dumped the man on the ground making me snicker and the lieutenant jump back as the man's face hit the dirt where he'd stood a second ago.

"Amar Ramadi" he said and I understood why the man was captured and not dead and also the reason for the tear in the tank-top.

Amar Ramadi was number eight in the Preventers' 'Wanted' list. He was the leader of the main Gulf fraction and one slippery weasel. We've tried to get him for two years and he always managed to escape. He was also very adept in using knifes.

I sighed dramatically and leaned on Heero.

"Oh well we'll have to do with each other then since our date turned out to be a wanted terrorist, won't we Hee-babe?"

The lieutenant looked ready to bolt but he had to take the prisoner so he quickly waved two of the soldiers, sorry peace-keepers, over and had them get the man while I was backing off of a scowling Heero. I was turning to bolt when I noticed the presence behind me and barely managed to avoid a head-on tackle as I hit who I saw was Wuffers' side making us both loose balance but we managed not to fall.

"Watch where you're going Maxwell"

"Sorry Fei but I've got eeep!" I felt Heero's steel grip on my neck and tried to get away but it was as always futile. Damn him and his superhuman powers. I stiffened a laugh as I imagined the Perfect Soldier in a Superman costume. If he wasn't holding my neck I'd have laughed myself silly. I really should cut down on those pre-colony shows.

I focused on Fei again and caught a strange look that was so brief I though I'd imagined it.

"Did you manage to capture them?" he asked Heero completely at ease with my suffocating situation. Scowling briefly I turned my head to the side and bit Heero's hand, hard. I didn't completely let me go but it eased for the second I needed to slip away.

"We got Amar Ramadi" I said grinning. Wuffers looked at me and I saw his eyes narrow just a fraction" Well actually Heero got him" I amended.

"Good. What about other members of the group"

I turned to look at Heero but his face hadn't changed. How had I known he was going to ask this? Oh yeah, that was Wufei. My grin widened a little as my Perfect buddy answered for both of us.

"They resisted arrest"

Wufei looked at us hard then nodded and walked away without saying more. I was honestly surprised. This was so…so un-Wufei like.

I lifted a brow at Heero who was looking after Wufei but as expected I didn't get any verbal answer.

We walked to where the command centre was to make sure everything was in order. Oh I hate that part! Why couldn't we just go home? I had a score to settle with one blue-eyed ex-terrorist and these people were keeping me from it.

I looked up and grinned at Heero then my attention was diverted when I saw a few peace-keepers scatter with apprehensive faces making a wide path for the two of us. I also noticed they were looking at my face.

"Hey Heero? Do I have something on my nose?" I asked rubbing it. My hand came out smudged with a red substance.

"You've got blood all over yourself baka"

"Oh damn!" I said as I grinned wider and waved a little at a peace-keeper that looked fresh out of the academy and enjoyed when he paled further.

I'd completely forgotten about that little episode with the wire and sure enough as I glanced down at my Preventer jacket which was as far as uniform went for me, I looked like I'd had a blood bath.

Was it possible to kill a man twice? I wish it was. Urgh, my bill at the dry-cleaning was going to be unbearable if I kept this up. I should do like Heero and leave the jacket behind.

A/N: So? Did you like it? Either way - Review! Thanks :)


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Much later the three managed to get themselves to the showers before they left. Wufei having finished his duties just abut half an hour before the other two had already taken his turn in the showers to wash away the blood and grime that accumulated on such missions.

"Hee-man? Pass the soap would ya?"

"Don't you have your own baka?"

"I did have my own but it decided to take flight"

"You dropped it and it slid under the sinks again"

"Yeah, so what about that soap you were giving me?" there was a pause then "Thanks" and a "Hn"

Wufei was toweling off his hair in the adjusting locker-room and the two voices from the showers were very clear.

"Um, Hee-babe?"

"Don't call me that!" was the growled answer.

Wufei smirked as seeing that he wasn't all alone in his crusade to make Duo stop calling him degrading names.

"What? Hee-babe?"

"Yes!"

"But it suits you so well!"

There was silence and Wufei could see in his mind Heero glaring at a grinning Duo.

"Duo" it was said in a low dangerous voice "if you don't stop you won't like the consequences"

"Really now" came a deadpan

There was a hissed curse in Japanese.

Wufei finished toweling his hair and threw the towel in the basket to be collected later. He called out a goodbye to the two that were still in the shower and pulling away his dirty clothes in it grabbed his duffel bag finally leaving for home.

He was at the end of the corridor when he discovered the disappearance of his car-keys. He scowled and put the duffel bad on a sill to rummage better. Still no keys were found.

The bag had been locked in his locker all day and he was sure that they hadn't fallen on the way from the car to there.

Breathing out an irritated breath he turned on his heel and stalked back to the locker-room. It was already late into the night and he only wanted to go home after a hellish day of taking care of hysteric hostages, demanding psychotic bosses that didn't let you have a damned shower before letting the paper-hounds take a nice-sized piece of you for some imagined mistakes in protocol.

He honestly wondered how Heero and Duo dealt with all the paperwork. He'd shot only one man and seriously harmed two others and he had been up to his ears in forms and procedure protocols and who knows what else so he couldn't imagine what they had had to go trough with their total of 45 dead terrorists.

His thoughts strayed to the conversation he'd over-heard but he stubbornly didn't let them go any further.

He opened the door to the locker-room and stalked over to his locker. He absently noticed the showers were still running.

Looking over the upper rack where his duffel usually stood he didn't see the keys so he crouched over and looked at the lower one with not much success.

Tracking his footsteps backwards he looked around the bench then went to the medication cabinet.

It was next to the entrance of the showers and as he neared he began to hear whispering voices.

"…said you were gong to pay for annoying me"

He paused with his hand about to move a roll of gauze aside.

"You did…" the answer ended in a hiss and there was a thump of a body hitting the wall

"I never lie Hee-koi"

Hee-koi. Wufei's eyes widened as he finally let his brain finished the thought he hadn't let it complete all day. Hee-koi. Duo had called Heero his lover twice over the radio and Heero hadn't said anything to admonish him.

There was a gasp from the showers followed by a low chuckle that was Duo's.

"Who'd have thought…" Duo purred" that the Perfect Soldier liked to spread his legs for other men" it had a cruel note that made Wufei sneer.

Whatever those two's relations were Heero Yuy would never stoop to being someone's fuck toy.

"Not…" Heero gave out a short moan" ...other men Duo. Only…ah…you…" the answer stopped Wufei short.

"Oh baby I love it when you get all sappy" the braided ex-pilot's voice was mockingly sweet" Unfortunately we have a score to settle so romance would have to…" there was another, smaller thump, and a grunt from Heero before he finished in a wicked panting hiss"…wait"

There was a moment where only harsh panting was heard over the beat of the water then it hitched followed by the slap of flesh on flesh and a throaty moan.

"Do you like that baby?"

There wasn't any verbal answer but a second later another slap followed by a louder moan was enough of proof of what it had been.

"Duo…" Heero's voice was panting like it hadn't even after a ten-mile run on the training course.

"Hm?"

"Faster…"

"Now, now baby. It wouldn't be punishment if I did what you wanted, would it?" Duo ground out the last two words as another slap reached Wufei's ears.

Suddenly the Chinese man realized where he was and an unusual faint blush colored his face. Hurriedly moving the gauze out of the way he looked behind it, then moved a bottle on antiseptic and thanked the higher powers as he snatched the keys.

"Cocaine"

I looked over to Heero and sneered pressing a hand to my throat. I didn't need him to remind me – my raw throat was doing a good job of that.

"Have you moved from cocktails to drugs Maxwell?" came Wufei's indifferent voice as he shut the door behind him and he sat in his usual seat on the round table in the briefing room.

I'm sure my eyes were wide. Heero said it made me look like a character from one of my manga. He also said it made me look innocent and delicious especially when the reason is his doing.

I know he must have had some of my surprise mirrored on his face because Wufei took one look at him and answered the question I was about to ask.

"Une is moving me to your division"

"What!" It was all I could say while I blinked.

Our 'division' actually consisted of me and Heero.

I looked over to my partner trying to get some explanation and got none as expected. He was frowning and looking Wufei over.

I turned and looked the new addition as well. If Une had put her foot down on this, and there was no other way to make us accept another member be it dear old Wuffers, then we'd have to make the best of it.

He sat rigid meeting our eye with challenge. Heh, he hadn't changed much since the war I guess. He'd always been competitive and always seemed to challenge anyone that could doubt his abilities. That was not good.

Our work was a bit different than that of other agents and there was no place for pride or separation in it. I knew Une was crazy but damn! Wufei was the ultimate 'lone rider' and she was throwing him in a team whose work was as intimate as it went!

I tried to clear my throat then cursed under my breath.

Heero looked over to me and smirked.

I growled something very unpleasant to him while I secretly kept an eye on Wuffers. Heero had already begun testing him whether the 'newbie' knew it or not.

He simply looked at us.

"You know Wuffers if you are going to be in our 'division'" I laughed there managing to choke but I waved a hand when I noticed Heero moving to pat me one the back with a hand that could bend steel" one of the first things that you should know is that Heero has a cruel steak a mile long" Heero was facing me and lifted a brow. I grinned widely then added" and so do I"

"Tell me something I don't know Maxwell" he said and I felt my grin sharpen.

"Believe me Wufei you don't know" I saw he was about to counter that so I hurried along" Anyway did you ask to be moved or did the psychotic bitch make you?"

"The psychotic bitch "came a cold voice from the door and I turned around with a disarming grin to look at a scowling Une" felt that you were stretching yourselves too thin already. I do not want you to excuse any failure with lack of resource"

"Oh man! Is this still about that Dragomir fella?"

She glared at me and I groaned. How the fuck should I've been present in two places at the same time!

"Yes! I do not want a repeat of that so I have decided to move agent Chang to your division. I felt he would be best suited for the job so I don't want to hear a peep out of you Maxwell!"

I closed my mouth with a clink of my teeth. There were sooooo many reasons why Wuffers wasn't our man that I couldn't begin to count.

I put my hands in front of my face and looked at the fingers that looked so few.

"Maxwell!"

I snapped back to attention and threw Une a patented cheeky grin.

"Yes Lady?" she hated when I called her that.

She glared at me and I gave her the puppy-dog eyes making her snort and loose the glare. No one, and I mean it when I say no-one, is immune to the Maxwell charm.

"Pay attention"

"Sure thing Lady"

I noticed Wufei looking disapprovingly at me but I could sense it was not as genuine. There just might've been a chance after all. I didn't put much hope yet, in fact I was severely skeptical.

Dear Wuffers was about to face things I imagine he'd never thought were possible in our, insert derisive snort here, peaceful and perfect society, and my mind failed to imagine him in the environment me 'n Heero usually work in.

"Duo stop imagining Wufei in "Go" "

I pouted and scowled at Heero. I swear he could read minds but then again I guess it wouldn't be hard for him to guess where my mind was going. I could just picture Wuffers at the bar, Fro trying to give a drink…

"Duo."

Ok, ok! Sheesh! Can't a guy have an overactive imagination?

"Maxwell! May I see the assignment?"

I turn to look at Wufei who had politely asked for it…three times. I couldn't help but grin and wink at him.

"No. I am leading this 'division' and if I need your help Wuffers I'll ask for it. Until then you. don't. ask."

I saw his eyes narrow as I turned to look ahead again. He'll have to get used to the state pf things, and fast if I didn't want to have one very dead Chinese ex-terrorist on my hands.

Oh man, I could just imagine Une when I bring in my report: killed in action, had to blow the shit up so the operation isn't compromised.

I looked around the underground garage and felt a deep longing for a drink.

Mine and Heero's cars were in two very good spots that were usually reserved for high-ranking personnel. Heh, what can I say – the job has its benefits.

I smirked and deactivated the alarm as I heard two resonating beeps. Looking up I had to lift a brow seeing Wufei slide into a sleek black 'kitten'.

"Nice" I said a wide smirk on my lips and saw him look up and answer with a smirk of his own as he kicked the engine.

Seating myself I closed the door and felt a familiar wide but sharp grin make my cheeks ache. A brief burst of adrenalin pumped trough my veins as I let my foot fall heavily on the gas as my hand worked the gears.

There may be hope yet.

He laughed as he flew out of the garage on Heero's heels towards one of their apartments.

"Now, Wuffers, off with the clothes"

Wufei looked at Duo like he was insane. Well, it was a public secret that the braided boy was not all there so it wasn't a surprise.

Duo scowled and suddenly he was serious.

"If you are going to be a part of this team then you will follow orders Wufei. I don't want to send you back in a body bag if I don't have to. Now off with the clothes"

Wufei looked over his serious face and after a moment of hesitation started shedding his clothing.

Dropping pants on the floor he stood in his underwear and looked back defiantly.

"Well, I like that. You shouldn't hide that bod my dear. Turn around"

Wufei glared but did as he was told and turned in a circle. Duo smirked at him while Heero looked on with appreciative eyes, not bothering to hide it.

"Veeery good. Now let's see what I can do to bring out that natural charm I know you've managed to hide somewhere …"

Very skeptical and not a bit unnerved by the situation Wufei watched as Duo threw open a closet and started burrowing around the clothes there. He looked back to Heero for some insurance but realized his mistake as soon as he met the intense Prussian blue eyes.

He'd known this new position was not like his usual Preventer work but taking in the situation he knew Une had downgraded the true nature of the 'department'. But he was the fool - he should have realized what it was as soon as she told his that Maxwell was at the head of it.

"A-ha!" with a victorious whoop Duo straightened and turned around, holding something up.

The first thing Wufei noticed was the positively evil grin the braided boy had on then his eyes traveled to the piece of clothing. The single piece of clothing.

"C'mon Wuffers, put this on while I find you some footwear"

Eyes widening Wufei looked from the…thing to Duo and back before taking a step back.

"No"

"Now, now Fei. You gotta blend in, well as much as someone with a body like yours and those killer eyes could blend in much anyway"

"That…Maxwell, I am not wearing that!"

"Why not? It's drop dead sexy and will give you freedom to move…"

"That is because there's not enough of it to hamper my freedom to move it in the first place!"

"Same thing" Duo waved his off and threw the clothing in his hands" Be a good boy and I might let you wear a jacket" he finished already turning away to enter the closet.

He stood there looking after him until he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the amused eyes if Heero Yuy.

"Do as he says" he said before going into the closet and coming out a few seconds later with his own clothes, if they could be called that.

Muttering about the injustice of it all Wufei's face twisted in a grimace as he looked at the torn pants he had been given before sighing and carefully pulling them on, making sure his feet didn't go out he wrong hole.

They walked trough the heavy metal door and immediately loud music assaulted Wufei's ears. His eye twitched but he otherwise didn't react to the sudden onslaught. His eyes quickly adjusted to the blinking colorful light and lasers and he looked over the packed with human bodies place. There was an island in the middle of the grinding sea of bodies with two men on top of it, seen only from a little over their waist up from behind their equipment as they made sure the obscene tunes played.

He turned when he noticed Heero and Duo were already a meter before him and in two long strides he caught up.

The braided man led them on the edges on the crowd until they reached a metal staircase and then up it. It led them to a second flood, about twelve meters above the crowd that went around the walls like a wide terrace.

There was a long bar along the wall and another against the railing looking over the dance floor below.

They walked on until seemingly randomly Duo dropped in a seat next to some guy hunched over a drink and made a gesture for them to seat next to him.

Duo looked over the dance floor and when a waitress that look very underage and had enough metal on her body to make it dangerous for her to be near powerful magnets came to them he ordered a drink, but not only for himself but for Heero and Wufei too though theirs was bottled water.

Wufei looked distrustfully at Duo's drink that was a vibrant green color then unscrewed the cap from his bottle and took a swing.

Suddenly out of nowhere Duo laughed then turned to the man on the chair next to him.

"Fuck you Joe"

"Yeah, yeah, you always say that and never get around to actually fucking me" the man's voice was low and dragging out the words with a light rasp.

"That's because you're uglier than Rem's teeth"

"Dear God! Please, don't mention Rem's teeth. The mere thought…brrr"

"Pussy"

"I'll tell Hel you said that"

"You go ahead and tell her and I'll cut you up in so many pieces you'll be better minced than that pate you like so much"

Wufei barely restrained his expression at the rapid conversation that had sprung out of nowhere.

"Who told you I like pate?"

"You did?"

"When?"

"Monday night"

"Ah…and where was I Monday night?"

"In Hole you drunk fuck"

"Ah…and what was I doing there?"

"What do you think you were doing there? You were getting drunk as a Marsian and higher than a kite"

"Ah…and what were you doing with me?"

"Getting drunk as a Mercurian and high as a kite"

"Ah…"

"Yeah…ah"

"What's a kite?"

"Where were you born? Under a rock?"

"No, on L3"

"A colonist, well then a kite is those things kids play with in the parks – they fly using the wind, ya know?"

"Uh, no. But I'll make sure to buy a kite next time I go to the park"

"You go to the park? What for?"

"Well, I like watching the kids play…"

"You sick, sick bastard! I knew you liked 'em young but not that young!"

"Heh, everyone has his tastes"

"True. But what did you do back on L3? There are no parks there, at least in the normal parts there aren't"

"I called the hotline. They've got everything and anything" the man said with a small nasty smirk on his thin lips.

"I've used the line once or twice but since I got Angel here" Duo pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to Heero who simply nodded once curtly at the man when he looked at him" I like to get my own fresh out of the crowd. I'm not too fond of used goods and I hear their quality has come down anyway"

"It has. They're having problems running fresh meat around customs but I hear they'll be taking care of that soon"

"Money or should I expect an express delivery soon?"

"Money. They caught a greenie and pushed a little until he gave"

"Phew. I hadn't rid of the last delivery yet"

"I'll never understand how you can do that. It makes me sick just thinking about it and you deal with it every time they fuck up"

"Someone has to do it and it doesn't bother me, not to mention the money is more than good what with that shitty government pay, bah!"

"It better be but I still don't get it how you...ah fuck it. Want another round? Angel? You gonna join us tonight? …Didn't think so"

"What about you...sorry but I didn't catch your name" the man looked at Wufei who looked back with no expression on his face.

The man was probably in his thirties, with a strong jaw and cunning black eyes that were wandering over Wufei, taking in every inch.

"You can call him Dao" Duo said drawing the man's attention to himself.

"Sword eh? Ok then Dao, tell me what's your drink?"

Wufei held up his water bottle making the man laugh.

"I swear Duo you always get the best! Does he kick butt like Angel? If he does what say you help me with a little something?"

Duo's grin became sharp and he leaned in.

"I'm listening"

I followed Duo and the man when they slinked out a door behind one of the bars and down a rickety fire escape that groaned under our every step. The two men were talking easily but never once did they mention where we were going. I've managed to catch very little of their conversation in the club so I didn't know what to expect. Considering events from the day and who was with me I expected I won't like wherever we were heading.

The cool wind of a summer night hit my exposed flesh and I resisted the urge to tug on my ripped clothes. Thank whoever was responsible for Duo deciding to give me a jacket too because I know I wouldn't have appreciated going around bare-chested.

We walked trough twisting alleys, dark, dirty and abandoned save for the occasional shadow that disappeared as soon as we neared.

I felt eyes on me and looked at Duo but he was still talking to the man, walking with a familiar bounce in his step.

Darting a glance sideways I saw Heero watching me, face as unemotional as ever.

I tilted my head in question, not wanting to break the strange comforting quiet between us.

He watched me for a few second more before a small, too small to be actually noted as one, smile lifted the corners of his lips.

"Just do as he says" he said eventually and turned away, the smile still on his lips.

Suppressing the urge to question him further I felt my eyebrows lower in a habitual scowl before turning to look ahead once more.

"And here we are" Duo had suddenly stopped a few feet from a plain metal door in one of the walls of the building on your left.

"Ya sure your boys can handle 'em?" the man asked looking me over and my face set in stone before I remembered this man knew nothing of my skills and relaxed a little.

"I'll do fine. How many do ya think will be there?"

"I dunno. Seven, eight? Not too many 'cause I know he's send the others on a job"

"Good, step aside"

The man did as he was told and Duo crouched in front of the door bringing a very small console and a knife from somewhere in the folds of his jacket that I didn't see him put there when he was dressing in his apartment.

He broke the electronic lock with the knife then connected the pad to two of the wires that were exposed and twenty second later a small buzzing sound alerted the doors opening.

He stood, the things already disappearing form his hands and into his jacket.

"Heero, point, Wufei, left, I'm taking right" was all he said but my body reached on its own violation when I heard the firm note in his speech and the familiar words, easing with effortlessness into a ready stance.

I nodded and Heero beside me was already in motion opening the door in without breaking his momentum.

It was like old times, suddenly pictures of times when we were breaking into OZ bases were overlapping the reality in front of my eyes. I don't know why but I suspect seeing the Perfect Soldier and Shinigami rise once again called out to the Dragon in me.

I slid after Heero, Duo on my heels and darted to the left.

The room was quite large and held only a desk, a small coffee table that was setting in its rocking after being upturned, and a few chairs, all of it directly in the line of the door.

Seven men, all big enough to make anyone pause were reaching for weapons, only one having already managed to bring his out and taking aim at Heero.

I felt old anger boil to the surface. Who did this man think he was to presume he could threaten a man such as Heero Yuy? Who were all of these men that didn't recognize men better than them?

I've never felt like this on a regular mission, haven't felt the old Anger for so long…

With a snarl I rushed at the man on the furthest left, ruthlessly strangling my wish to go after the man that was aiming for Heero, and with one controlled, even if stronger than necessary hit on the neck he was toppling unconscious while I used him as leverage and planted a kick in another's gut before finishing the job with a kick to his face while he was falling.

Adrenaline and anger rushing trough my veins I straightened into a defensive position and even before I've settled I was already launching myself at a man that was pointing a gun at Duo.

As the man fell I snaked a hand around his neck and tightened it, feeling him choking in my grip. How dare he!

Looking up after the body in my hands had slumped I saw Duo at the door, an old Shinigami grin on his face letting Joe in.

Joe darted a look around and then went for the desk.

As he turned the corner there was the sound of a gun firing and he jerked, the bullet hitting the wall harmlessly.

His face twisted into an ugly mask of anger and he swooped down dragging a whimpering man by the cuff of his coat from behind it.

"J..Joe…"

His answer was Joe throwing him bodily against the wall where he slid to a crouching position, followed by a savage kick to his guts.

The man exhaled heavily then coughed, trying to get a breath painfully. Joe didn't give him the chance to get that breath before kicking him again, making him curl on himself.

"Wha'dija think you shit? You can't run from me!"

"Please Joe…" the man wheezed before coughing again.

Lee drew his fist back and laid it on the man's jaw like a ton of bricks.

"Don't fuckin' 'please' me! You had a whole month to get me my money!"

The man spat blood and tried to focus of the figure above him but his eyes kept crossing.

"I…I'll pay…"

Joe drew his fist back threateningly.

"I'll pay! The" the man coughed blood" …the money's in the safe…"

Joe hit him one more time but this one in the shoulder before pulling back and dragging the man by the cuff of his jacket.

"Move" he growled pulling him before him and keeping his hand fisted in the jacket.

The man stumbled but with Joe's firm 'support' he slowly made his way to the other side of the room.

Duo, Heero and Wufei stood on the other side guarding the unconscious men at heir feet.

The color in Wufei's face was suspiciously high as his eyes stayed fastened on Joe with occasional flickers to his two companions while Heero's eyes sparkled with malice as he threw dirty looks at the man under him. Duo leaned casually against a wall, his foot swinging, accidentally hitting one of the men's arms with each swing.

The beaten up man that Joe was dragging stopped before a wall and opened a secret compartment that blended with it.

Running trough a retinal scan and typing in a code the heavy door hidden behind it opened and Joe threw the man aside in favor of grabbing a couple of chips inside.

He looked them over then motioned for Duo to go take a look.

Duo pushed off the wall and stepping over the man he'd been hitting with his foot reached over and took the chips. His eyes narrowed e looked them over for a few second then nodded.

"They're clean"

"Good" Joe growled. He turned and kicked the man who had curled in a fetal position once more for good measure and nodded to the door.

"Thanks man, I owe you" he said once outside, leaving the door open with one of the men's feet jamming it as he had fallen.

"No problem Joe, just remember that when I call you next time"

The man smirked and looked at Heero and Wufei who'd followed behind him and Duo.

"That was a pleasure to see boys. I look forward to working with you again" his eyes flickered over Wufei" And you do kick ass Dao"

Wufei gave a curt nod of acknowledgement.

"Well, I'm off. See ya 'round"

"See ya, Joe" Duo waved and grinned before turning back to Wufei as the man disappeared behind a dark corner ahead.

"That was good Fei but I can feel that rant coming and I advise you to keep you mouth shut until we get home"

Wufei glared at Duo but slowly nodded.

That night they had broken at least ten of the Earth sphere's law and from what he could see it wasn't something unusual for Duo and Heero to do things like that – help a thug get his money from a client.

Just what the hell were they doing!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The air was sizzling with tension as we walked into our apartment – it was the most convenient place.

I looked at Duo. He was smiling as always, the grin of Shinigami peaking underneath the stretched lips.

I felt no urge to smile back, never have, but it was reassuring to see it, to know I was not alone.

The door banged closed after the last of our company entered and I felt the smile push against my lips. Wufei. The passionate Dragon that intrigued me so, intrigued Shinigami too.

A man of contradictions; a violent soul wrapped into a package of tight control that was harder than gundanium. I have seen his shell crack, as he had seen mine, just like the other pilots but I wondered what would happen if he shed it? I felt a tingle of pleasure at the thought of all that power unleashed, wild…

Felling eyes on me I returned Duo's look. The Dragon will stay. We did not need to say it out loud, a simple look was more than enough between us.

"Maxwell…" Wufei's voice, a flowing low sound that rippled like silk trough the air was a demanding growl and I turned away so he won't see my smile.

My laptop was on the table so I sat down on the couch and opened a communication window.

I needed to send word to Une and of course to our friends of the developments of the night.

I heard Duo's and Wufei's heated voices arguing.

It is always enjoyable to listen to Duo - he had a way with words that enabled him to sweet-talk anyone into anything with a little help from his natural appeal.

There was sudden silence and I looked up to see them looking at each other. I didn't try to read them, emotions weren't the easiest thing for me to understand, but I could guess that the 'discussion' would soon be finished.

Looking at the archway to the kitchen I mentally cataloged the contents of the kitchen and decided on tonight's dinner, or breakfast considering the hour.

Tapping a last sequence that would encode the message in appropriate code I send it to the last interested party and closed the window.

Standing up I looked at the two.

"What would you prefer for breakfast?"

Wufei's look was worth the effort to ask instead of just making something like I usually did with Duo.

"What?" he said and then turned to glare at Duo as the braided baka laughed.

Sparkling amethyst eyes like no other, I just couldn't get enough of them. I love the way they sparkle with dark mischief like at that moment.

"Make a Special, Hee-kun"

Raising an amused brow though I know that to anyone other than the Gundam pilots it wouldn't show as amused I nod and head for the kitchen.

A special it is.

Taking out the ingredients I chose a heavier knife from the counter and set to work.

As Heero went to prepare breakfast I looked back at Wufei. I hope, for all that I know my hope is not realistic, that he would survive. All I could do was give him the best chance but if he does not understand our, mine and Heero's, world I could do nothing to protect him.

I know I am grinning and not a pleasant grin either because I feel him suppressing his need to take a step back.

"Just keep an open mind Dragon or you will become just one more cross" I lift my shirt's sleeve and turn my hand so he can see the inside of my forearm where in a neat row are three simple black crosses.

I see his eyes sparkle in some kind of understanding I pull my sleeve down. I expect him to say something, ask questions, and just be himself. Instead his black eyes burrow into mine as if trying to tear into my mind trough what people say are the windows to the soul. Tough luck, Dragon, not enough soul left for you to see and the mind you'd better not.

I feel my grin had slipped if only a fraction and reinforce the natural stretch of my lips.

"C'mon 'Fei, breakfast is getting cold!"

Spinning on my heel I turn, hearing the smack of my braid hitting him and laugh as I propel myself towards the kitchen.

Wufei sat back on his chair and looked at his two companions over the empty plate that had held his breakfast.

Heero was eating his breakfast rather slowly but still not slow enough to allow it to be called enjoying the meal even if it was not the brisk efficient manner which Wufei remembered from the war, while seemingly shutting out the braided man on his side.

Duo on the other hand was chatting away about something called 'the frog' but less than half of the words that came out of his mouth made sense tied together, while he polished off his place and tapped away on a pocket pc console. Multitasking was a definite Maxwell trait.

The scene was eerily domestic with nothing to point to the acts of violence committed just hours ago. It was as if the pale orange light of the morning sun that washed over the kitchen had washed it all away and what was left were three young men enjoying a peaceful meal together.

Suddenly Duo jumped up from his chair and stretched making a few joints pop and his shirt to ride up his stomach showing defined muscles and drawing two pairs of eyes – one watching openly and the other darting for a look before moving away.

Yawning a jaw-cracking yawn and giving a lazy scratch of his stomach he grinned.

"Well, I'm off to bed. Don't wake me up unless its death or death"

With that and a wink to the two he bounded out the door and soon the loud click of his bedroom door closing was heard.

There was silence in the kitchen for the next minute as Heero finished his breakfast and put down his fork, wiping his lips with a napkin.

Intense dark eyes were then focused on the Chinese man in front of him. It seemed as though Heero was about to say something but then he simply stood picking up his and Duo's dishes and put them away in the sink.

Wufei followed the example and brought his own and the frying pan from the table.

The space between the bar and the sink wasn't that big and the fit of both of them was a bit tight, shoulders and hands brushing as they moved around each other.

Wufei felt his skin tingling in an unfamiliar way and hurried to brush the sensation away.

As he stepped around the bar to join Heero he told himself that his heart didn't beat any faster when he caught those dark eyes once again.

"Would you prefer to sleep on my bed or the couch?" Heero's voice almost startled him but he simply blinked at the other man.

"Couch" he said feeling his throat a bit too dry. He told himself that the thought of sharing Heero's bed hadn't existed.

Nodding Heero turned and exited the kitchen, disappearing into his room. Wufei moved to the living room and sat down on the couch, looking unseeingly out the window, ignoring the bright spots that filled his vision as a result of the sharp early morning rays of the sun.

He barely reacted when he felt Heero enter the room and didn't turn to face him when the other put down a pillow and folded blanket next to him and he thought he'd imagined the low voice that murmured 'Sweet dreams, Wufei' just before Heero's presence left the room.

Closing his eyes, painful green spots exploding under his eyelids he slowly reached over and pulled one leg then the other up on the couch before taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling it, letting the air that left his lungs to take his confusing thoughts with it as it left his body.

Heero woke to the feeling of something tickling his nose. Opening his eyes he was met with a view of twin amethyst jewels not an inch in front of him shining above a wide mouth stretched in a familiar grin.

Duo let the end of his braid fall away and moved back to give him some space.

"I'm going out" the braided man said

Heero blinked at him then nodded.

"Do you need me to come?" he asked but did not move to get up, already knowing the answer.

"Nah,I'm just going to pay El a visit"

Feeling a tiny stab of some unidentified feeling that was dutifully ignored Heero nodded.

Duogrinned and leaned down to nip at his lower lip before calling out a cheerful goodbye and leaving with a wink.

Heero looked at the empty doorway unblinkingly, his brain empty of all thought then with a shrug he closed his eyes and thirty second later he was deep asleep.

Wufei woke up from the sound of the front door closing before hearing the lock being bolted again, his somewhat foggy mind processing that he door was again secure his eyes closed and he returned to sleeping.

The burning, scorching fire inside me is roaring again. I can feel it wash over my skin, so cold that it burns it away with each wave. I felt a light buzz inside my head where the horde of demons were feasting, already tasting what lay ahead of me today.

The shadows had always been my friends and I followed them trough the ten blocks to El's place.

My lips were numb and my hands kept clenching and unclenching. I could feel the drug of the Green Fairy I've drank last night flutter inside my heart, feeding me adrenaline and making lust stir in the lower regions of my body.

This was the best time for me to pay El a visit. When the Green Fairy had her hold on me I didn't care who was underneath me or what they wanted.

Slipping in the back alley of the rather rundown building I found the fire escape and with a ten paced start jumped atop a dumpster before lunching myself at it and hauling myself up on it, feeling the adrenalin reach a new level in my bloodstream.

In times like this I feel all-powerful, a master of my own destiny. In times like this I could even delude myself into believing it.

El lives on the first floor – rather convenient if you ask me, and she didn't even lock her window. Smart girl. It would seem she had learned after the second time I broke that same window.

I smiled at my trusted knife as I slid the blade under the window and lifted it a crack before I put my hands in the crack and opened it all the way up.

Throwing a foot over the sill I entered the room and then went to sit on the couch. My body protested at being told to wait but I simply grinned more and switched the TV on.

The sounds of heavy moaning filled the room as it automatically displayed a porn channel. It was a rather obscene close up of a man and woman thrusting and moaning in fake passion for the cameras. My cheeks hurt again as I caught a glimpse of the woman's face. The camera had caught El's good side and I'm not thinking about her face either.

"Who the fuck…" the door at the other end of the room was thrown open a and a low and somewhat gravely voice started to snarl but cut off as soon as I looked up from my place of the couch to meet El's widening fake purple eyes.

"Shinigami…shit" she whispered and took a step back her hand fisting in her satin robe. It was closed loosely so a long line of lightly tanned skin ran down to her navel, the slippery cloth barely being kept over her breasts.

"Hello El"

I said feeling the tightly leashed lust inside me rear up at the tantalizing picture in front of me.

"What…what do you want Shinigami?" she said and I saw her swallow nervously.

My lips tingled as I ran my tongue over them.

"To talk"

"Only to talk?" she said not an ounce of belief in her tone. I would have been affronted if I cared.

"No but we will talk first"

I saw her eyes flutter and she took a deep breath before looking into my eyes but not managing to keep doing so she looked away.

"What do you need?" her voice was still gravely and I could easily guess the reason for it. I wondered when she had come back from her trick.

"Now, now El, show some welcome to your guest" I purred and in one move I was up, my blood singing in dark lust trough my veins as I stepped an inch away from her.

My hand slipped over the smooth cool satin of her rope, up her hip then back to squeeze her tight ass. Damn but El was one fuckable bitch. She gasped a little and twitched in my bruising grip. My hand released her and slid around her waist, I tried to smile more but I felt I couldn't. Was that why she looked so afraid? She was at Shinigami's mercy.

In one move I gripped the other shoulder then turned her around so fast she didn't even have time to get a scream out before I hand her firmly against me – one hand over her shoulders and the other on her waist.

I grind against her and leaned to whisper in her ear.

"You wouldn't happen to have been collecting some fresh meat for the Hotline without telling me, would you El?"

I felt the shudder that ran trough her and have into the urge to close my eyes and grind against her again. The Green Fairy was working her magic and I knew it wouldn't be long before I was totally lost to her.

"I…"

I bit her shoulder that had been exposed by the cloth when I had turned her with enough force to draw a few drops of red blood. I licked it and then licked my lips smearing the coppery taste over them.

Hurry up girl before I decide to take what I need from you before we talk.

"I…I've been told to keep an eye out but I haven't delivered them any, I swear!" she said in a trembling voice.

I grazed the bite with my teeth.

"And you didn't think to tell me this?"

I licked the bite again then sucked on it viciously drawing more blood.

She let out a whimper and tried to struggle against me.

"I…they contacted me only two days ago…I was about to tell you…"

"You should have contacted me the second you heard from them. Why do I pay for if you don't, El?"

The nails of my hands bit into her shoulder and hip.

"I…I…"

"I see"

I knew what I needed.

In one sharp move I shoved her against the wall and pulled away the string that held her rope together, moving the cloth out of my way. One hand still around her shoulders, pinning her hands to her sides I used the other to open the zipper on my pants, freeing myself.

You, Green Fairy, are one mean bitch, but I like you anyway.

Wufei, dressed in his own clothes after getting rid of the mockery of clothing that Duo had given him, walked into the kitchen and looked around. It was late afternoon and the light was once again playing shadows around the room.

With a frown he walked over to the cupboards and opened them one by one until he found a kettle and some tea. Filling the kettle with water from the tab he put the water on the stove and set it to boil while he leaned on the bar and looked it.

What was he doing there?

He could have excused himself with Lady Une but he knew better. Even with all her influence the woman would not dare go against a Gundam pilot if he put his foot firmly on the ground.

His eyes were once again unfocused as he remembered the previous night. With a breath that was just a little deeper than the previous he let his mind recall the song of the fight in his veins. Even with the work he had been doing for the peace keeping force it seemed he had not felt the true thing in a long while. The inevitable question of 'Why' was left without an answer when he felt his mind wander in dangerous territory in search of that same answer.

Refocusing on the present he started thinking about his present situation but had to stop once more when his mind quickly connected this to his previous line of thinking.

A wave of relief washed over him when he turned to look at Heero who had just entered the kitchen.

"Good morning" the blue-eyed man said producing a raised brow from Wufei.

Morning? Either Heero was joking, a shock worthy notion, or he had lost track of time - unbelievable to a laughable degree for anyone who knew the Perfect Soldier.

When a slight smile tugged on Heero's lips Wufei had his answer and his other brow joined the first. It seemed that living and working with Duo had rubbed off on Heero.

"Good evening" he answered, thwarting the smile that fought to appear on his face, or at least trying to.

"How long have you been up?" Heero asked as he passed by Wufei on his way to the fridge.

"Not long. Is Duo still sleeping?"

Wufei placed his eyes firmly on the kettle as Heero opened the door to the fridge and bend over to get some vegetable from the lower shelve, the singe piece of clothing he wore – a pair of loose sweatpants, riding down so that the top of the cleft of his ass showed.

Closing the fridge with his elbow Heero put the vegetables on the counter next to the sink and reached over to open a cupboard overhead, his half-naked body stretching, the movement bringing out the muscles on his back, side and arm, as he brought out a deep platter.

"No, he's out"

Wufei turned to look at Heero in surprise.

"Where did he go?"

Heero shrugged and ran the tab bringing a couple of tomatoes under the water and washing them.

A frown tugging on his face Wufei tried again.

"When will he be back?"

Heero paused before answering.

"He should be back in time for dinner"

Twenty minutes later Heero was finishing dinner and Wufei was sipping the last of his tea when the front door opened and then closed.

"Good evening to you my good men!" came the cheerful voice of one Duo Maxwell as he bounced into the kitchen, nose high in the air making him look like a dog that had sniffed up its pray. It led him to the kitchen counter where Heero was adding spices to the dish before pulling it away from the stove.

"Aah,that is why I love ya Hee-babe! I swear if it weren't for the fact that I _know_ you are one kick-ass motherfucker I would swear you were a house wife in a previous life" he said as he tried to steal a taste and got hit on the hand by Heero's wooden spoon, while the other man's attention was still firmly on the pan in front of him" Ouch! Not so hard! I bruise easily!" he whined as he tried again only to have Heero snort then grab the knife next to him and point it in his direction, still not looking away from his work on dinner.

"Hands off Maxwell"

Raising his hands in the air in defeat Duo huffed then a raspberry at Heero and turned around with flourish and in three steps flopped down on the kitchen table, next to a dully amused Wufei.

He grinned at the Chinese man.

"Hello Fei, sleep well?" he said receiving his due scowl for the nickname.

"Fairly well. And you Maxwell?"

Duo waved away the question and still grinning leaned back on his chair, balancing it on its hind legs.

"Great. He 'Fei? What doe sit mean when you dream you are being attacked by large bunnies in neon-green tutus?" he said not taking a breath.

Wufei snorted and smirked at him.

"It means, Maxwell, that I should get Lady Une to reevaluate your status on the Preventers and get Sally to finally lock you in the madhouse where you belong"

"Aw," Duo whined and mock-pouted, battling his eyelashes at the other", why are you being mean to me Wuffers?"

"You calling me these god-awful names is not enough a reason?" came the deadpan

Duo laughed a sound deep and vibrating trough Wufei in little waves forcing him to clamp down on another reaction he chose to pretend hadn't been brought up anyway.

"Oh, okay. You be mean and I keep calling you names then" with a wink Duo dropped his chair and stood" I'll be right back" he called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the bathroom and not a minute later the water was turned on.

Wufei watched Heero out of the corner of his eye, trying to find something in his pose, not sure what it was he was looking for.

Heero was bringing out the dishes for dinner and Wufei quickly stood to help.

He wasn't sure if he imagined it or not but Heero seemed more tense than he had been before duo had come back.

"Let me get these" he reached to take the plates from Heero" You get dinner"

As he set the table Wufei wondered why Heero would be tenser with his partner present than when said partner was away. Letting his mind get close to something he had been avoiding for as long as he had been in his two ex-comrades company he thought that perhaps it has something to do with the more personal side of the two's relationship.

Shaking his head minutely he decided it wasn't his business as long at it didn't interfere with their work.

He sat down again after putting the plates and glasses on the table closely followed by Heero who brought the pan and a pitcher of freshly made lemonade.

Wufei was about to eat his first bite when someone brushed past him and a grinning Duo flopped do won the chair next to him with a cry of "Hey, wait for me!"

The braided man didn't stop talking, briefly managing to engage them in an argument over one of the new models of laser scopes, filling the silence that would have undoubtedly filled the kitchen had the other two been left to dine alone.

Once dinner was finished and the dishes cleaned. Wufei turned to the other two.

"When should I expect you to contact me again?" he asked as he moved to the living room to pick up his jacket.

There was silence behind him and he turned to see a madly grinning Duo and smirking Heero who stood in an eerie imitation of each other with their hands crossed over their chest, the Japanese man leaning on the case of the door that led to the room.

"What?" he said frowning, suspicions already running amok in his head when faced with that united front.

"Where are you going 'Fei?" Duo purred making him suppress a shudder, the cause of which he left unresolved.

"Home" he answered simply before his scowl deepened when Duo only grinned wider.

"I dunno what Une told you about this Wuffers but you should know that" Duo's grin crooked" as long as you're in this division your home is where we are"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I saw the black car roar out of the building's underground garage and as I often do didn't try to repress the grin that I know from trusted sources is a bit more than disconcerting. The car flew down the street and I swear I could physically feel the driver's irritation, yes – irritation, not anger.

As surprising as that was after the initial brief burst of anger, again strangely only directed at the psycho bitch herself as his quite nice words in Chinese, not suitable for audience under the age of 18, had showed, there had only been irritation left. I may be not be empathic like our blonde angel from Hell but I know people and can read them, especially people that I've fought and been on the brink of death with them, more than once.

Really, Wuffers was becoming quite an interesting puzzle for me. And in only a week since we've had out first mission together! He should be flattered actually. Save for a couple of other people, one of them standing behind me and looking after the car over my shoulder, I rarely get interested.

I laugh out loud and turn to look at Heero, taking in the small smirk, the cold cobalt eyes, and couldn't help but lean over and bite his neck, tasting that intoxicating flesh.

He didn't move save for a small tilt of his head to bare his throat more to me. Drawing back I look into his eyes again and see they haven't moved from their gazing trough the window.

"Marry had a little lamb…" I started humming and smirked at him, knowing that despite the fact that he isn't looking directly at me he'll still se it"…and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to follow…"

I can see his interest. Really now, Wufei should be damned proud of managing to make both me and Heero notice him in such a way so quickly! I grin again and move away and into my room.

Grabbing my coat and a pullover then poking my head into Heero's room to get his jacket, while I shrug them on, I return to the living room where he's already put away all evidence of Wuffer's sleeping arrangements and is toeing on his shoes.

He doesn't even look up as I toss his jacket over his bent back but catches it when he straightens and it begins to fall.

"C'mon Heero, we have a coupla' hours only"

He meets my eyes and I notice that smirk is still lingering on his lips.

I wink at him and pull open the door.

Wuffers should be fuckin' proud of himself.

My hands gripped the steering wheel in a white-chuckled grip. I ignored everything aside the accelerator that had long ago done all that it could so the car could fly down the almost empty streets. Blood was pumping trough my veins and pounding into my ears as I took another corner just barely. Why should I slow down? If I did hit someone I would probably get away with it. No, I would get away with it. Who would even try and throw an ex-Gundam pilot in jail? They would have to be insane. Like Maxwell…like me.

There was a reason I was being suddenly chucked into their team, a reason why Une decided to put me with the other two pilots that were in full-time service. A very good one at that.

I felt my face tightening and I wish I could make the piece of junk that passes as a car to go faster but it simply can't. The small white arrow on the dashboard that is showing the speed is happily vibrating against the small piece of steel that keeps her from going after the last digit on the scale. In fact everything is vibrating, every tremble of the machine going trough the metal and plastic, the stuffing and the leather of my seat and washing over me with a blessed numbing effect.

Had I not shown her that I could control myself on the last assignment and the ones like it before? Had I not held back and only retaliated when attacked?

My thoughts went back to my last assignment with my two comrades from the war and unavoidably to the men themselves. It wasn't that we didn't see each other – we did work in the same building after all, even as big as Preventer HQ was. But all of us were kept busy as it turned out that peace was harder to keep than to achieve in the first place.

Blue…My limbs reach without any conscious thought from me and the car is severing to the right, breaks are screeching as my foot glues the pedal to the metal underneath and reflexive estimation of the space around me and the situation saves the car from hugging a nearby lamppost.

I feel the acceleration hit with a final blow and my body is pulling against the safety-belt, crushing my chest and pushing the air out of it with a hiss as my eyes close on their own violation. I barely feel falling back into the seat until several second after. Carefully against my body's protests I manage to gulp back a lungful and it sears my abused chest, the second one is easier and automatically my mind assesses the damage done to my body. Nothing is broken, a throb in my hand tells me that it may be sprained, my chest hurts but again nothing is broken and I don't think there are any serious contusions. It seemed I would get away with only a bit of bruising.

My eyes open and immediately I am searching for the reason for this little adventure and find it sobbing in some woman's arms. The little girl is wearing a sky-blue dress that stands out on the gray background of the city – probably the only reason why she is alive still.

Taking a deep breath and giving a little shake of my head to clear away the adrenalin-based fuzzy-ness before taking a second to calm my pulse. I unbuckle and push the door up before sliding out. My nose is hit with the smell of burned synthetic and I see the smoke that is already dissipating from my tires and the twisting black trail on the street. I circle the car making sure I have not damaged anything too badly before returning to the driver's side and beginning to enter. I'm stopped by an angry shout.

"Hey! Where the fuck do you think you're going you bastard? You almost killed my daughter!"

An angry female is striding across the street; behind her another is holding the crying girl and another child in a pink and yellow suit.

My eyes turn to her and I step fully out of the car once again. I meet her enraged eyes calmly. They are blue, probably a lighter shade but her anger had deepened the color do something darker but still much lighter than Heero's…

She's standing an inch in front of me already and I can feel the heat of her ire radiating trough the small space.

"You are going to stay right here and wait for the police"

I know it is not appropriate to laugh but I barely held the smirk as small it came out. The woman thought that the police could help her? Even the Preventers couldn't help her, and everyone else. It was truly a wonder how much people believe in the illusion of peace.

"What would they do?" I asked calmly

That got a predictable reaction and it was visible she was restraining herself from physical violence.

"What would they do! They'll chuck your sorry ass in an asylum that's what! Because that's where you belong you sorry excuse of a man! The streets of this city are not made for maniacs like you! You could have KILLED MY CHILD!"

I can simply imagine Duo's startled and pleased grin when I laughed in her face.

"Woman! These streets were _built _by 'maniacs' like me with the blood money of war" I chuckled again at her expression before sliding into my car " What do you think some policeman could do to me? " It really was funny so I continued to chuckle as I pulled the door down and revived the engine, the car slinking off the sidewalk and I steered it so it was in an appropriate position on the road before gunning the engine again, though this time I did not let the gear lever stick to the last one.

Behind him the woman watched in shock as the sleek and expensive black car pulled off then tore down the street. In her mind the dark laugh of the black-eyed Asian man rang making a pang of fear felt in her chest.

In the last second she came to her senses and looked for the registration number but there was none.

"Next time I want to know _before _it happens. Now shoo!"

Duo let the man go and he scampered away, nearly falling in his haste.

I had always enjoyed watching Duo when he was in his natural habitat – the streets.

The part of town we were was not known for being safe and was perhaps a step from being called a slum but it housed some very useful contacts – people that to me were more closely related to rats than to humans such as Relena. Despite that though they were a well of information when we needed it and it couldn't be found by hacking or when we needed some gossip confirmed.

Pushing away from the wall I stepped closer and stopped a hair-breath behind him. I did not touch, I did not let myself when we still had work to do but the need was building in me and it was a way to show him that fact.

I had had to suffer all morning and the evening around a man whose body simply screamed 'fuck me!' at me and hadn't had a chance to let the heat out since then.

It was a small surprise when Duo leaned back against me, his ass pressing against my crotch and his back over my chest, as his hands slid down my sides.

"I know" he whispered in a husky voice that I had come to know as his 'we're fucking now, and to hell with everything else' one" You must have it worse off than me, having that tight rump prancing around you all morning and the evening before I came back and not getting any …" his hand sneaked between us and squeezed at the bulging front of my pants making my eyes flutter and a barely detectable hitch in my breath" …release"

Then suddenly he wasn't there any more and was walking backward, a mischievous grin on his face that made my blood flow faster trough my veins. "Come on _lover,_" he drawled the last word and licked his lips before turning to walk straight" the car is this way and the couch twenty minutes away" he looked over his shoulder" If we hurry"

There was a tugging on my face, a somewhat alien sensation for me still, when I smirked and followed with wide but not hurried steps and taking out the keys from my car. There was no way Duo would wait for the last stop of the day before going home after what he'd just said.

Fifteen minutes was all it would take to get to the inner side of the front door.

I am going to need new tires very soon. That thought flew trough my mind as I pulled the car to a stop in front of my apartment building and climbed out before setting the alarm – otherwise it would be gone before I've even entered the building.

My apartment was on the third floor. I had chosen it carefully for the defense and escape options it had and of course because I simply liked the lack of too many walls.

I had formed different rooms in typical Chinese fashion with screens that slid aside. A fellow agent had once come over to get some documents with me and had told me it was bare, that he could hardly imagine someone living in it, before I had said it was mine. He had apologized and then complimented me on the clear cut of the style. He needn't have.

I knew having so few possessions was strange to other people but I didn't need them and even back at my home colony I had never had clutter in my room.

Only the kitchen looked a bit fuller since I needed kitchen appliances but still it would be oddly bare for another man. I had a refrigerator that was by no means large, a gas stove from which I had never used the oven, a table that was bare as the walls and counters. My cupboard held two mugs, a set of twelve dishes half of which I had never taken out of the packaging, three deeper plates and a salad bowl. There was a lonely wok – the most used thing aside from the mugs, and a few pars of chopsticks out of which I ever only used one and two spoons.

To be honest with myself I didn't even need that much but some warped need to at least have some cutlery in case I had guests had made me buy this much. Of course I never do have guests.

I opened the fridge and looked at the meager contents before pulling out the carefully wrapped leftovers from yesterday's lunch and fetching my chopsticks before leaning on the counter and picking at them. I never bought much food. I was prone to settling on assignments that were sometimes a week long unexpectedly and after that happened on the first week after I bought the fridge and I came back to the rotten contents I stopped buying more food than I could eat for two to three days at most. The only thing in my kitchen that was ever bought in amounts more than a few meals were spices and tea.

As I picked at my food I kept my mind blank and eventually I finished half of it then threw the rest in the garbage and washed the dish and sticks and put them away.

The designated bedroom was similarly lacking anything that was not directly usable. There were a few books on the ground next to my head next to the night lamp that I had read and one that I had started reading before the last assignment and never gotten past page twenty. That one was a loan from the library as well as two others out of the total of four books. The fourth was the Preventers' rulebook given to me by the organization.

I stepped over to the closet and lighted the lamp before reaching for the two duffel bags on the top shelve. One was already full – arms and ammunition, and the other I filled with some underwear and a few clothes, leaving the Preventer uniforms that took most of the space in my closet behind, and a spare pair of shoes. Bringing the two bags with me I sopped by the bathroom and took my razor a few hair bands and a comb and the half-full bottle of shampoo, before moving to the 'living room'.

It too was sparse in furnishing – a couch, a table a chair and a sword stand for my ancestral sword in the rare times I was home and I could put the weapon on it. There was an empty pot in one corner. I had tried growing a plant when I had first moved in – blame it on the same temporary madness that was responsible for the too many dishes in the kitchen – but it had died the same week I had been proven I didn't need too much food in the fridge. I had never tried to replace it after that but hadn't thrown out the pot yet. That was a year ago.

I paused at the door and tracked back to the kitchen to fetch the garbage bag with the leftovers before I shouldered the two bags and walked out, locking the door behind me.

It was hard to drive in a straight line when a hot wet mouth was driving you to the edge of orgasm but I somehow managed to get both of us back to our apartment in one piece and in record time. My head fell back against the headrest of the seat and my hand buried in the mass of reddish-brown hair on my lap as it bobbed up and down.

It felt good, so good, to be enveloped in that moist cavern, to have the sharp teeth graze me and a wicked tongue play… I did groan when suddenly it pulled away and I let my half-closed eyes open. I was met by the extremely erotic sight of Duo grinning, his mouth looking a bit swollen and bruised.

"You don't want to end the fun before we're even started, do you?"

I think his voice is an aphrodisiac for me because as soon as he said that I was on him pulling him over to my side of the car and my lap, hissing out when his still clothed ass rubbed against my naked flesh before I caught his mouth in a rough, hard kiss, pushing my tongue in his and tasting myself there. Not braking the kiss I fumbled to pull myself inside my pants and at least partially close the zipper before with some effort I climbed out of the car, leaning on the side of it I blessed automatic locks as I pressed the button for the alarm, and found my balance with my arm under Duo's bottom, my fingers sinking into the firm flesh of one ass cheek.

His legs locked behind me and his mouth moved away from mine the sting of his bite on my neck had me nearly moaning and stepping away from the car, across the few feet to the elevator and pressing the button before I returned my attention to the demon in my arms. Lowering my head I used my teeth and chin reveal his shoulder before I licked there following with a bite.

He makes the most delicious noises that in return make me forget my shaky sanity.

It was luck that it was such a time of the afternoon and most of the neighbors were still away to work or we would have had to deal with police. As it was only the lazy guard behind the monitor for the elevator camera got an eyeful of us making out before we reached the door to our apartment.

Unlocking it took a few minutes and once inside we simply flipped the bar over it before I had Duo's back pressed against it.

I parked my car next to Heero's, assuming that is where I could park in the underground garage of their building.

A minute later I was in the elevator, a duffel in each hand, and my chin on my chest.

It would be hard staying with them. My mind supplied me with visions of Heero's half-naked form from the evening and I firmly cut off that train of thought. No, that wasn't the reason. It was the fact that I hadn't lived with anyone since my colony was destroyed and in all honesty their apartment was not that lager than my own.

Yes, that was the reason. It would be hard transition since even with a little information as I had I knew that this new assignment would take time.

The elevator doors pinged and slid open and I stepped out.

As a whole the building wasn't very quiet but in the hour of the afternoon it was the halls were filled with a surprisingly small amount of noise. That's the reason I could clearly hear the thumping sounds coming from the direction of the apartment.

As I moved closer small grunts and a moan reach me and I paused in my step a few feet away from it. The door was moving with each thump and my overactive mind was quick to supply me with a very erotic picture of what could be causing that.

My teeth clinked together and I physically shook myself, willing my heart to calm and other…parts of me to return to normal.

I stepped over and rang the bell.

There was another thump then a groan and some shifting, a grumble that I recognized as Duo and a low baritone responding that could only be Heero. It was less than a minute before the door was opened to a disheveled looking Heero. His tank top wasn't tucked into his pants ad his hair was messier than usual…

A lump formed in my throat when those lidded cobalt eyes ran down my form with a fire resembling only the one I had seen in them amidst a battle before they returned to my face. I saw the muscles on his jaw working before he stepped aside to let me in.

It was a second before I forced my limbs to move and I held my breath when I moved past him and into the hall, my eyes locked with his. I noted the slight pink coloring on his face but denied myself from looking lower for further proof of my suspicions.

I stood there waiting for what I don't know, not looking away.

"Wufei" My gaze moved to the form of an equally disheveled Duo leaning against the couch. . His voice was lower than normal and husky making me suppress a tremble but I could do nothing about the goose-skin that resulted.

The air was thick and when I took a breath I could feel the unmistakable smell of sex in it. I felt hot and had to lick my dry lips.

"I'll go put my things away in Yuy's room. I am sorry for…interrupting" I managed to say and was glad when my voice sounded normal.

Duo's eyes were dark and the combined power of his and Heero's stares on me made me move to exit the room as fast as possible without alerting the other two of my haste.

I watched Wufei hurry out of the room and my eyes slid over his lithe form, the narrow hips and wide shoulders, his liquid movements. How the fuck could that man be so attractive and yet so sexually repressed? I ask you! The Gods had no mercy for me or my libido.

My eyes traveled to Heero who was still looking after the boy as the sound of his room's door closing was heard. Well, maybe they did have some mercy.

Unceremoniously I pushed my flimsily closed pants and catching his burning eyes turned and bent over the couch.

I smirked when I saw the bulge in his pants jump then he was moving toward me his pants somehow finding a place on the floor somewhere around the door.

I closed my eyes when I felt when felt like three of the fingers of one of his hands penetrate me briefly to make up for the interruption while the other slid over my back then fastened on my waist and the fingers were replaced with something much better.

I moaned loudly when that sweet, sweet spot in me was hit with the second thrust and my arousal grew when the thought that Wufei must be hearing everything penetrated my lust clouded mind.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry for the wait

Chapter 5

Putting the duffels on the floor Wufei looked around the room that he would be sharing.

The space was enough for one man to be comfortable but the two of them would be in a tight fit he thought. His eyes flew over the dim room completely unsurprised by its spartanian appearance or the presence of some quite powerful computer cases and fold-up monitors along with a few gadgets he knew most hackers out there would kill for.

There was one single bed pushed against a wall, the sheets made military style. Noticing that Wufei guessed he'd be taking the floor. He eyed the space between the bed and the wall against which stood the two desks and the machinery and knew it was set up that way so Heero could roll of bed and be at them in moments notice. He would just have to hope that if the other needed to do that while he was sleeping on the floor Heero would not step on him. And even if he did…well it was no big deal.

A ragged moan flittered trough the wood of the door and he let out a heavy breath, feeling his heart rate which he'd managed to somehow lower since he shut the room's door, jump again and a wave of warmth settle over him.

He bent to remove his shoes and settled them neatly next to him as he sat of the floor before the bed and closed his eyes.

Breathe in, feel the air enter you, filling you, absorbing all the tension, your thoughts. Breathe out, steady, let the air cleanse you, let go of your thoughts, let them leave you with the air…

When Wufei opened his eyes next he couldn't say what part of the day it was since the room had no windows but it was absolutely dark, only a small sliver of light breaking trough from under the door .

Blinking his eyes he noticed the silence was filled with low breathing that was not far from him. Eyes adjusted to the lack of light Wufei looked to the side and into the relaxed face of Heero who was obviously asleep.

The outline of a pile of blankets and a pillow in front of him registered in the next second. It took him a few slow blinks to move but he reached over and in a minute had the covers settled on the floor and was lying on his side, back to the bed, and closing his eyes.

His waking mind tried to force thoughts to the surface but with practiced stubbornness Wufei pushed then down. It made him feel a little unsettled, his head a little too heavy, but sleep was a priority and his internal clock was telling him he hadn't been asleep for longer than an hour.

He slept. He dreamt.

Above him two Prussian blue eyes stayed half-open for hours every little pained noise the dreams caused reflected by a steely flicker in them.

There are too many things. Too much work. Too much of everything, really, in life.

Don't you just wish everything was simple? Clear cut?

Dream on baby and pop a couple of those pills to keep the dream from disappearing while at it.

I could tell it was late, early, whatever, without looking at the clock but I didn't feel the need to sleep. I never did manage to teach myself that sleep was something my body actually needed for a prolonged, undisturbed period of time. Get too used to stealing a couple of hours here and there, between one mad dash from the coppers and another, or in the middle of fucking torture, excuse me, _training_ schedules, between battle, between kills, between missions. You end up like me – sleep just comes in between and most times these days it didn't come at all.

So here I lay getting philosophical about my current bout of insomnia and depleting my stack of cancer-sticks. Heero hates those for some reason. He says the passive smoking he is subjected to, notice the word he used – subjected- I laughed myself silly over it for some reason, will lower his operational level in the long run. And he said it with a straight face. How do you say that straight-faced while butt naked and wiping cum from yourself after being fucked into a damned wall not five minutes before?

I sometimes wonder for real if he's human. I mean if he's less of a human that me, for example. It had been long checked off from out lists about things to know about ourselves that we were in fact genetically fucked-over. He said modulated. I say fucked-over and you'll have to get my bulldog jaws smashed with at least a Leo before I let go of that one.

I don't know if it bothers him really. I know he's not very sweet on the idea in general but it gives an edge over everyone that is what has kept us alive so long.

That's one side of it that even I have to, in all my pig-headedness, agree with.

Yeah, but all good things come with a price, right? Right. Just ask Tro. Poor man. Anyway. I've often wondered about Fei, since I came back to Earth. I never did see much of him at HQ, in the rare occurrence we were there, even when I did he just …seemed the same. I heard rumors about him around the building, while sharing a sig with some of the paper-pushers, who'd heard it from those on the field, but never anything much. He worked alone, was most of the time gone on long-term missions and fuckin' Une refused to tell us what it was all about. Its not like we won't find out eventually but it nagged at me. It was just a hunch, a feeling. I can't say it was a good feeling but I never do get any of those so it's easy to shrug it off.

I wonder what he did after Mariemaia?

Why didn't he settle with that sadistic doctor Po and have many little sadistic Chang's running around by now? The woman was crushing on him like a schoolgirl and trying to hide it– it was easy to see even back then, but thinking about it I've never seen him giving her any lead-ons. Is that a good thing? Shit yeah! Of course I'm a presumptuous little shit so I am free to make the mind-leap when I damned want to.

That's gotten me in trouble enough times but I'm not about to change just because the universe has a problem with my random thought process. The universe can go do a 'big bang' for all I care. Though Hilde did care – a little too much in my humble opinion. She disagreed with me back then and I dare say she'd disagree now.

It was a mistake from the start – clear as night for me but sometimes I feel the unbeatable urge to lie to myself and do it with surprising success. I managed to do it for a year – not a personal record but a damned good score none-the-less.

It's like playing in a movie or something, ya know? You go and do what people expect you to, at least in the most general terms, try and be just an eccentric, or plain crazy, but still something that they've seen before in one form or another, still fit in somehow, be …normal, somehow.

Not, and lets repeat that once again kids – not, let then get it that when you say that you want to gut the man who'd tried selling you the fucked parts you are actually thumbing one of the knifes on your wrists – checking the sharpness. You do not allow then to think you're serious when you say you wished you had your Gundam so you can stomp on the Governor's office then blow a fucking hole in the hull of the Colony to suck the rest of the idiots that worked there into space before the Colony's emergency shields go up. You do not tell then about the sucker you beat to death behind the old Murdoc's yard for messing with the street rats that had hunkered in the abandoned building on the down street. You do not tell them about your night-time friends. You do not let them suspect that you were anywhere but on some sweet date when you disappear for a night or two. You do not do any of those things – you smile and make a joke.

Biting my hand to stiffen my laughter does help some 'cause I don't want the two in the other room awake. I know Heero won't ask questions – he rarely does – but Wufei will, of that there is no doubt. Better have a bitten-trough hand tomorrow than that particular Dragon after my ass with questions.

Heh. If it weren't questions I won't have any problems with having him after my ass though. Mmmm. Now that's a nice thought.

He's always been a nice sight, sexy in a fiery, angry, violent way, but now he's growing into a man and it's like the older he gets the better he looks. Just like Heero, and Quat and Tro. All of them are a damned sight for my poor eyes and I get the feeling they're yet to hit me with the full blast. They still have a few years until they grow entirely out of the teenage stage but with all the training and the life we led and still lead – there's too little 'teenage' in them as it is.

I watch Quat on the vids and I see this handsome blonde, filthy rich, powerful young man who is on top of it all polite and smiles like a thousand watts. You just can't resist – I bet that's how WEI got as it is.

And Trowa. Hot damn! I swear if I didn't know him to be who he was I'd decided he was some model or something. And those eyes! Catherine once said he has the eyes of a wild cat. I completely agree! And cats need to eat right? I'd willingly offer myself to be a meal, anytime baby.

It's hard to smoke around a grin such as mine and besides – it's getting a bit hot here. Despite the fact that I'm naked and lying on top of my covers.

Should I even start of Heero? I mean we just fucked in the middle of the livingroom a few hours ago. The man is a God pure and simple. He's a cross between a mini-Gundam and something wild. And wicked. And has hands that can drive you willingly to hell and back screaming in pleasure all the way.

Aw, damn. I shouldn't imagine all those together. I mean that's like shaking nitroglycerine then putting it in open fire and adding a little plastic for good measure.

But I'm already imagining, so why not take advantage? If my hand hurts tomorrow I'll have Wufei do one of those pressure-point tricks he did during the war and fix it for me.

Mmmm, maybe I'd manage to lure him to fix more than the hand while at it?

Wufei blinked his eyes opened and stared blankly at the ceiling that had once been white but was more gray than any other color, even more so in the early morning light.

It was one of the best moments of the day for him – the feeling where he was still vaguely warm from sleep, his body relaxed and his mind empty.

There was a muffled noise that fluttered to his ears like a screeching bat and broke his precious illusion like fine crystal.

He wasn't in his apartment. He wasn't in his bedroom. He wasn't in his bed. That was not his room's ceiling.

That was Heero Yuy's room. Heero's blankets and Heero's ceiling.

Futilely he tried to recapture the emptiness that had filled him just moments ago even though he knew it was useless. Once his mind was pushed in a direction it acted as if in vacuum and kept drifting in that direction unless a larger thought didn't deter it or it reached the end of infinity.

He closed his eyes and fought to find the needed leverage to slide into a state of mind he fell into during a mission.

He tried to quiet his mind – it screamed back at him a thousand questions.

Tried to set his priorities straight – and they got tangled.

Tried to appease his body – and it rebelled.

He could feel the burning in the lower part of his body rise as his heart defied his attempts at meditation and thrummed harder in his chest, racing his blood trough his body, making it flush, before pointing it downwards.

It was clear that he was not going to manage anything like this. With deliberate moves he rolled to his feet and then bent to fold his blankets. That done he took the towel, pointedly left folded on the back of the only chair in the room, and slid the door open.

The corridor was empty but he could hear the sounds of Duo's laughter and the clank of dishes as breakfast was prepared. Or was it lunch? He cared little to none.

The bathroom was next door so he simply stepped over and then locked it behind himself.

Breakfast was quiet and Heero felt a tension that had not been there the previous evening between them.

Last night when they were going to bed Duo had been relaxed, content, actually grinning but now Heero saw the steel enforced porcelain mask on the long haired baka's face even as he looked at Wufei. Especially when he looked at Wufei.

Finishing washing the last dish he handed it to Duo to dry and turned to Wufei, who had cleaned the table.

"We will be going to do some exercise in the building's gym. Do you wan to join us?"

Duo looked at him in surprise.

"We will?"

Heero shot him a look, silently willing him to shut up. As if by magic – he did.

Wufei was looking at him with a blank face they all knew too well, then nodded once and went to the living room.

Duo beamed at him and his eyes twinkled in such a way that Heero nearly gave in and pressed him against the bar despite the poisonous ball that was starting to form in the bottom of his chest.

"You're a devil, Heero"

Feeling no need to reply Heero pulled the stopper of the sink and the water started draining.

As Duo stepped away he thought he heard the words showers, naked and ménage a trois

Duo knew him too well but somehow he doubted today would be the day for that.

Pain had always been there for him. It was more stable than the world and it was his personal belief that it will continue to exist long after the world itself was no more, if just to spite human kind.

There were different kinds of pain and he wouldn't be so arrogant as to say he knew them all but he was not stranger to many of them. Causing oneself pain on purpose was one of them though he had stopped to refer to the pain he put his body trough every time he entered a gym or a dojo as such. Really, it was simply something that was there and without which his time in the gym or dojo would have been wasted. And he hated wasting time – after all it wasn't his to waste ya know. It also brought him a measure of stillness. A few moments where his life was pushed far away by the feeling and the ringing of his blood in his ears became the song of a fallen angel welcoming him. It would probably give a fit to someone who knew the jester Maxwell to connect him with the word still but such people could choke on it for all he cared. He might even help them if they couldn't do the job well enough by themselves.

It was one of his fallings – the need to seek out that stillness of mind trough any way possible. His relief had been bittersweet when he'd learned that Heero felt the same.

So, to Wufei's complete surprise he guessed, as soon as they passed the threshold of the gym he stripped. Oh, what fun it was! But he didn't strip of his clothes. He stripped off his face until the raw and bleeding thing it covered surfaced.

He met Heero's pained and angry smile, saw him strip for his own Shinigami in a way they only did in three places – in the haze of lust, in the thunder of the battle and the brewing storm when they readied for them.

The gym was always empty at this hour and there were no cameras and the trainer knew to be conveniently away. One meeting with Shinigami and the Perfect Soldier had been enough for him to last him a long while, a moderately long while some called a life.

Duo didn't meet Wufei's eyes as he pointed over his shoulder, already moving towards a couple of full size punching bags.

"The mats are over there. If you want a sparring partner just ask"

And that was that.

He supposed Wufei had expected a public gym full with sweating young bodies Duo could ogle, joke and flirt with, jestering and not getting much work done. Not that he minded that he had managed to off balance the as deadly as he was gorgeous Asian – it happened to be one of his specialties, thank you very much.

"Key?" asked on is left and Duo considered for a second.

"Anger. I think it would fit Wuffie's mood"

He turned and saw Heero slip a chip in the multimedia system of the gym and also knew the other had read trough his words without even having to think about it. Then the music tore trough him.

His eyes fluttered closed to slits and his head tilted up. His facial muscles contracted and he growled trough his teeth.

He felt his pulse climb. Distorted images of a club where he'd heard the song first invaded him followed closely by the vivid scenes of the blood on a filthy bathroom floor, the glazed light hazel eyes looking at him empty.

His body moved without his conscious cooperation.

Anger, anger blazed as bright as L2 in the night sky – easy to wake, easy to power, easy to let go his control over to when there weren't any bystanders he could kill without meaning to while in its grasp.

No, he had two of the most dangerous men in the known Universe with him and knew neither would hesitate to stop him. Crash and control his soaring anger.

_Getadelt wird we Schmerzen kennt _

_  
_Whoever knows pain becomes criticized

How did people who had never been in the fire know how it felt to be burnt?

_Geadelt ist wer Schmerzen kennt  
vom Feuer das in Lust verbrennt_

_ein Funkenstoss  
in ihren Schoss  
ein heisser Schrei  
_

Whoever knows pain is raised

from the fire that burns in desire

a hard thrust (that gives off sparks) into her womb

a hot cry

A child wept as its skin burst with the angry boils of a plague that 'peaceful' men had given birth to in their damned womb of lies an deceit, of blinding ignorance and apathy. Demons hiding in the stolen skins of humans.

_Gefährlich ist wer Schmerzen kennt  
vom Feuer das den Geist verbrennt  
gefährlich das gebrannte Kind  
mit Feuer das vom Leben trennt  
ein heisser Schrei  
_

Whoever knows pain is dangerous

from the fire that burns the soul

bang bang

the burned child is dangerous

with fire that separates from the life

a hot cry

A child watched as its family begged for death, agony twisting their wasted childish faces, cracked lips pleading …

_Damnit Kid! Just gimme my knife! Oh God it hurts! I'll do it m'self! Just gimme the knife!_

Oh, he'd know fire, and he'd known desire. Burn!

_Feuer frei!  
_

"Duo!"

He whipped around, fist lightning before him. It was caught and crushed in a steel trap.

Wildly he met a pair of burning dark eyes.

He didn't breathe. Didn't think. He was empty, a silent shell for his anger.

"Duo. Stop"

He freed is hand from the trap and kept on looking.

"Why do you do it?" he heard a raspy voice asking and barely recognized it as his own over the raging torrents in his head. His blood was pulsing in his throat painfully.

The dark eyes were inscrutable but fevered.

"Why do you live for?"

Why wouldn't the voice shut up!

"Where were you for the last year?"

Shut up!

"Why?"

Please…

The dark eyes were silent as their owner.

"Let's fight" he said instead and turned back to the mats.

Not spar. Fight.

Wufei took a ready position and looked at Duo imploringly before turning his dark eyes on something on his left.

"You too Heero. Come"

No one moved until Duo heard the sharp sound of metal hitting metal and then Heero was walking past him. Duo followed.

The three stood in a perfect triangle, looking at each other. Then Wufei bowed and they did too, respecting the warrior that he was.

He saw but didn't care when he saw the blood running down his ruined hands, already soaking the ripped bandaging he'd put on before going into the gym.

He saw the way Heero's veins pulsed, standing out on his flushed skin like blue snakes.

He saw the vague understanding in a pair of black eyes and it was all he needed.

And so they fought, the empty room echoing with their panting, the swish of limbs tearing the air, the groans of nearly missed hits and the muffled thuds of the ones hitting their target, as each fought the other two.

Duo duck under Heero's fist and turned so Wufei's kick fell passed him. Ending behind the Chinese fighter he threw a kick into his back, bringing him down. Heero was forgotten as he followed him and with a careful aim pinned his arms at his sides, straddling him. His one free hand found its way to the sweaty skin of a throat.

He met the dark eyes.

"You were on L3" he said panting" You were there when they massacred all those people. Why?"

The one under him didn't answer only looked on at him, eyes bleeding out of feeling, leaving a frightening emptiness behind. Duo squeezed harder, feeling the thunderous pulse under his palm.

"You were the one who infiltrated the filtering system and released the gas"

His hand convulsed over the throat.

"Yes"

It was nothing but a statement.

"You hacked the system and lowered the barriers" he continued unrelenting, feeling some familiar tightness on his face as Shinigami fought to reach the surface, smelling the blood in the air.

He only looked at him but the answer was clear. Duo leaned closer until he was nose to nose with him.

"One more time and think carefully. Was lowering the barriers in your mission plan"

He could feel the heat radiating from the man under him and for a few moments his vision tunneled only to the pair of eyes, expecting an answer that would mean the life or death of one of the few people he considered a kindred soul.

It was an endless moment, far longer that those eternal hours of suffocating death on the lunar base when this same man had saved him.

"No"

His world stopped spinning out of control and settled into its delirious but known orbit once again.

He pushed down on the neck as he violently stood from him. For a moment he kept his gaze before he looked up and saw Heero nod despite the gundanium that had replaced his face.

Duo reached a hand and without hesitation the one on the floor took it and allowed him to pull him on his feet then he grinned at him and winked.

"Welcome to the club Wuffers"

Wufei saw Death recede from the braided man's face and a grin replace it.

They knew. He hadn't doubted they would catch on sooner rather than later. The question that remained was what was going to happen next.

When he'd taken the mission from Une he had immediately known that he would fail long before he had to make the decision of either signing his ex-comrades death warrants or joining them on it.

A:N: And so the plot begins to unveil. This chap is half of a longer chapter that will be giving the real foundations of this fic ( at least un-romantically) plot wise. I'll try to have the second part finished and posted by the end of the week.

And for those of you who are also folowing 'Viper' - never fear - there is an loooong update coming too, though probably not this week.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The water that washed down the pale tiles was tinted pink and Wufei watched it fascinated and unseeing at the same time. He could hear Heero and Duo washing, the sound of water hitting bodies and the rustling of the open curtains. He hadn't close his too. Why should he?

Despite all the sexuality he'd witnessed between the other two, despite the tension he admitted to himself but refused to acknowledge, he didn't feel he need to hide. To close the curtain.

Especially when the small well of poison that had been eating him from the inside had been broken into and something, some unnamed feeling was seeping in once more. His old Master had once told him to picture his soul, to give it a face, an image, and use it to find his own centre.

Before the war his soul had been like that green field of grass he spent hours under the oldest tree in the colony reading and studying. It had been calmly alive, balanced despite the constant hum of the unexpected. It had also hidden a small hidden creature, buried in its soil that was the keeper of all those feelings of anger, hate, resentment, bitterness, jealousy and arrogance that he liked to keep where they were – out of the light of day.

When the earth of his calm soul had soaked the blood of his child-wife and the tears of his pain the creature had fought to the surface.

When he'd gone out in Altron for the first time the grass in the field of his soul had withered yellow and the small delicate white flowers that had dotted it had been blown away in ashes.

When the deadly brilliant light of his destroying colony had burst like a million shooting stars the last leaf had fallen from the old tree and fire, a blaze that was so hot it burned him cold from the inside out, had lighted the remains of it.

It had scorched him until the moment when Treize Kusherenada had committed suicide using Wufei's weapon.

Then the ash had rained over the ruined planes of his soul. After that even the ash had settled and an all encompassing stillness, a dead silence, had created a world of little feeling and no hope of resurrection.

He remembered the mission Maxwell talked about all to well. It had been three months prior in section 3-46 of the L3 colony, one of the smallest but well populated. The people were protesting about the latest rise of the water cost that was simply too much for their meager salaries – the section was populated with the poorest part of the colonists.

Water on the colonies wasn't like it was on Earth. On them there weren't public fountains unless you were in some multi-milliard company's office or in the home of the small group that occupied the highest echelons of the foodchain. Unlike them if the common people couldn't pay their water they would die of thirst.

The people that had been protesting had been the kind that had already had to forgo a few showers a week so as to save as much of the water as they could.

Une had called him to her office in the early morning after he'd been back from the last mission for less than a day. Her instructions were short, clear and unrecorded – as they always were. Go to L3, silence the people by any means necessary, make it look like an accident and don't get noticed.

As always he'd given her a courtesy bow and taken the first commercial flight to L3 like any regular passenger in third class. He'd shown his Preventer badge to get his sword and pistol trough security and he was clear.

It had been too easy to break into the control room of the air-pumps of 3-46 since there was no security there and the only technician on shift was unconscious before he could see Wufei's face. So easy to shut the filters off. So easy to override the system and cause a short-circuit in one of the turbines, that made sure the poisonous gasses that accumulated in higher quantities and a larger variety than on Earth were guided out of the section rather than straight over the subsection where the protest was being held, did the opposite. So easy.

Then he'd broken into the security shields of the section and simulated a resulting from the turbine's short circuit alarm that had lowered the shields around the part of the section that held the protests. He had killed 113 people that day, including two 14-year-olds and a 12-year-old he'd later found out from the news. The news also said that the short circuit was caused by the on-duty technician who had left his post to join the protests.

The shields had saved over 1000 lives from a slow suffocating death and had made the 113 victims' own passage from the world quicker and less painful that the long agonizing death of slow suffocation that would have killed them after hours of torture.

When he'd gone back Une hadn't commented but he'd seen the look in her eyes. She'd wanted the whole troublesome section eliminated. She should've been clearer with her commands – he did only what he was told to.

He had followed his orders diligently ever since the end of the war. Day after day, week after week, death after death.

He'd seen the rotting corruption of the peace he had fought for spread in the core of the shiny apple that the media presented to the public for their reality. It hadn't really mattered though because at the bottom of it he hadn't fought for peace. He had fought for revenge, he'd fought because he was the last one of his clan left who could, he fought because he was the last one and wanted to join the rest of his clan.

He'd gotten his wishes in a twisted, painful way that was worse than not receiving them.

He had wanted revenge on the man who had headed the organization responsible for his colony's demise. Had wanted to fight a warrior's battle with him and kill him as he himself was killed by an equal. Instead he had been used by a man, born a visionary and spirited warrior who had seen his blind need as a way to die honorably in battle with one of the great Gundams and had not granted him his own release. Had left him weeping like a child on a battlefield that should have been his grave.

Then he had returned to a world where the war seemed to have already begun to be re-written so it could be put as an acceptable story in the history books. A history of a war where the massacres and atrocities of it were wiped out by the peace-time dictator's quill like they had never been, but not from the sufferers' souls.

His fall had been complete when he had bowed to the command of the woman who had held her finger on the button of the laser to result in the demise of his kin.

It had deadened him completely and he'd simply done what he was told to do. Only the thought of four other men who had been thrown as child-soldiers in a war not their own but which they had made theirs had kept him from letting his ancestral sword be colored bloody red by the blood of the last member of the L5 Dragon Clan.

How could he shame them after all the blood and sweat they had shed together? When the moments when he had been in one of those young men's company had been the only ones when the writhed tree in his soulscape tried to give life to at least a single leaf?

Looking at the pink water carrying his blood down the drain he knew as he always had that he couldn't even if it meant the existence he led.

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder and turned to see Heero looking at him stonily even though the hand's hold was steadying, light, comforting.

"Come. We have to talk and explain some things to each other"

Wufei nodded and despite himself shuddered when the hand was removed, wanting the solid presence back.

As soon as they were back at the apartment, still in their sweaty, ripped and bloodied workout clothes Duo had him sit on the couch and settled Heero next to him taking control of the moment, while he disappeared in the bathroom for a second. He came back with a small brown bottle and a small package of pressed cotton tampons. Opening the tap of the bottle with his teeth he made a face as the liquid from the bottle made contact with his tongue and sputtered.

"Fuck this shit tastes like shit"

"You repeated yourself"

"Like Gundam fuel, better?"

"Considering that Gundams are powered by atomic energy? Yes"

"Good. Can I now stop the armies of bacteria and viruses that are fighting an epic battle for dominance over the convenient entrances to your immune system?"

"Yes, Duo. You can disinfect our scratches"

Wufei looked at the two who were acting as if nothing had happened and joking around. He met Duo's gaze for a second when the braided man looked over his split lip and saw in them that it was just that – an act.

"Seeing as Wuffie's lip's blooming thanks to yours truly and your hands are still bleeding from the weights… yup scratches they are"

"And your knuckles" Heero added calmly catching one of the hands that were taking out one of the tampons and landing a kiss directly over the broken skin.

Duo smiled at him and drew his hand back.

"It's nothing"

"Then you won't mind when I bandage it in a minute then"

"Bastard"

"I can't know"

"Asshole, and if you say you can't see it to prove it I'm putting the bathroom mirror to recreative uses"

"If you want to"

Duo snorted as he tapped the tampon, colored a faint purple by the medicine in the bottle, over Wufei's split lip. The Chinese Preventer, or ex-Preventer it seemed, flinched unconsciously at the first touch but didn't give any other reaction as the antiseptic burned on his lip and the tip of his tongue when it invaded his mouth.

"Ya hurt anywhere else Wuffie?" Duo asked looking his hands over and tapping the tampon over one of the knuckles that was scraped.

"No" he answered assessing the various aches trough his body but not seeing anything that needed antiseptic.

"Good. Hee-koi? C'm'ere"

Wufei's mind was twisting over the talk that was coming as he watched Duo climb into Heero's lap and work on his forehead and palms, not missing the chance to lay his own kiss over the abrasions. That was also the only time Heero made a sound and it didn't sound like a hiss of pain but rather like the sounds that had managed to invade Wufei's dreams the previous night.

Looking at the two men beside him Wufei wondered if they had found their happiness with each other. It was obvious that their relationship wasn't even on the outskirts of the popular understanding on normal but it mattered as much as an amoeba on Earth mattered to Saturn's outer ring, even if the chaos theory probably would have tried to find some connection there.

They didn't kiss on the lips though, he noticed.

When he was done with his work on his partner he tried to get up and put away the liquid and tampons and got as far a as a centimeter away from the lap he was sitting on before he fell back with an 'oomph' as a hand with a hold that steel could envy had sneaked around his waist.

"Not yet" Heero said and with his free hand took hold of a tampon and pried the bottle from Duo's resisting fingers.

Duo 'ouch-ed' and hissed, and fussed, and wiggled on Heero's lap trying to make his hold waver. If Wufei hadn't just felt the deadly spirit inside that long-haired body he would have been tempted to wonder who the immature teen was.

Of course the 'immature teen' wasn't fussing because his bleeding knuckles hurt but because they were being treated at all. Wufei remembered even back at war that the pilot of Deathscythe had refused to take care of surface wounds saying that they reminded his not to fuck up again.

He wasn't sure what he expected to happen next – for his, in his none existent social life, friends to fill in the blanks that his debriefing had missed? For them to put into words the growing feeling of wrongness in the world they had bled to allow to be? Somehow he knew that was not going to happen.

Trust was something that people gave very carefully and when it came to the ex- Gundam pilots that maximum was stuck with hyper-jammers and put to the test of passing the borders of the known galaxy and justified soldier paranoia.

When at last Duo's hands were bandaged the other two in the room didn't waste time and stood, moving towards their rooms.

Despite the feeling in his gut that something was amiss Wufei opened his mouth to ask them to wait, to give him something.

Duo turned with a grin that was just on the side of sharp.

"We're going out to eat. Go get dressed Wuffers"

If anyone were listening Duo's voice sounded absolutely carefree and normally jubilant.

Closing his mouth, keeping that serious violet stare Wufei nodded and did as he was told.

" I told you Zoe makes the best hotdogs this side of the blue ball" Duo bit into said hotdog with relish.

Wufei looked at his – a sixteenth of a credit thing that was dripping in oil with a bun that could have with some imagination passed as last-week's and if you lacked said imagination – last month's. Something greenish was stuck on the side and Wufei was sure it had not come from any plant known to men except maybe in some of the more adventurous colony laboratories. He bit in.

Surprisingly it tasted much better then it looked so he grunted an affirmation and received Duo's startled laugh.

"You owe me five creds Heero my man" he quipped and pocked the silently passed over currency.

They were walking in a small, run down park about five blocks from the apartment. It was easy to see the park also functioned as a home for a small number of homeless and dealers' trading ground.

They had walked there then stopped to pick up lunch from some sour-faced gnarled wraith of a woman that had insulted Duo all the while she made the hotdogs.

"So Wufei" the use of his proper name immediately caught the Chinese's attention and he looked over at Duo" What have you been up to these past couple of years?" he said looking at him penetratingly.

What had he been up to? The same thing he expected they had even though looking back they might have unknowingly and unintentionally ended on different sides once more.

" Missions" he said simply and in light of the information they had about this 'mission' on L3 he knew they would know enough. He felt a shot of pain in his chest thinking that even if they used the L3 mission as ground they would still be off the mark. The feeling was unexpected and he missed a step he quickly covered.

In the years since the Mariemeia incident he hadn't felt such a thing, not really.

He looked the two men at his side with new eyes. Perhaps there was hope if there was pain then there was life, wasn't there?

"Hn" Heero wasn't even looking at him but Wufei felt of the two he would be the one to understand that shot answer better. If there was one thing Heero Yuy knew better than anyone in the world it was the 'Ninmu ryoukai'. But there was something else there, something that told me he too was on a mission and this time it was personal. And I saw the spark of anger there also and nearly gave a reaction when he said all too calmly" You've killed many of us on your missions"

I met his eyes and wished I hadn't chosen the wrong side. Again. But no more, this time it won't be about me. This time I will be a follower of the only people left in this twisted world that could have a real view.

"And you are still on a mission? She sic her dog after the resident rebels?" Duo finished.

"Yes" Wufei confirmed even though it wasn't needed.

And even if they were wrong, he had nothing, absolutely nothing left to lose but the one thing he'd almost forsaken on his own two times already.

"How long do we have?"

Duo knew that if Une was sending her black man in, especially considering the connection between him and the targets, things were about to hit the fan. Big time.

The surprise of knowing, not suspecting as he'd done before the fight, after he had used his insomnia to hack Preventers' best kept information and seen the small, heavily guarded file '05', that the fifth of the Gundam pilots had become Une's personal solution to all mainly human problems that must disappear, was acknowledged then shoved down in the small black box next to the images of the life of a street-rat named Kid.

Wufei took a second to think things over.

"Why did we leave the apartment?" he asked at last, a suspicion forming.

"Bugs"

And the suspicion was confirmed.

"Then we don't have long"

He said we looking over to the two, meeting their eyes in turn, silently telling them that it didn't matter what they would expect from him – he would do it. He'd do anything to make at least the polite and a little grumpy mask he kept on like a trusted weapon even at the beginning of this mission, a reality.

"What is she planning to do with us?" Heero said with such a calm tone that all the other pilots knew he would use even if the sun exploded and wiped out the whole civilization. If it was a fact then why get exited over it?

"Your death warrants are ready to be signed on her desk as soon as I turn in my report" he said, keeping his surprise at the sudden, almost not there but never-the-less felt, pang of remorse" Mine is there too" he added without any real feeling connected to that particular detail.

He was worth alive as long as there was something he could do, something that was at least a little right. He'd done that working with Une, making sure that the innocent victims were less than if someone else had taken the job.

Our conversation in all its half-said and half-understood glory was a strange thing and would have probably not gone much further even without the grey minivan that came, breaks screeching. Considering the surrounding the sudden appearance of an unmarked vehicle and the five men dressed in absolutely normal clothes. If they were in a crowd you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from the next man if it weren't for the expressions. They all knew the expressions – they saw them in the mirror often. And of course the pistols that were already leveling at the three of them.

Even before the car had came to a full halt the barely touched hot-dogs went flying and the three were splitting up, sprinting into the bushes.

The sound of the air being cut trough by bullets and the sound as they hit a tree, not an inch from Wufei's face told him his words from not five minutes ago were already outdated. The warrants were signed.

He ran, darting around the vegetation and dodging bullets as well as he could as he oriented himself in the vague direction of the wide shopping street that was on the park's east side. All the while his brain was on overdrive. How? How had they found them? They hadn't seen a tail on their way and with the three of them together it was impossible that they had missed it.

Even more, Wufei thought as he calculated the height of the park wall and put a little more power in his sprint, why would she already be releasing the other dogs?

She needed proof, she still needed something on tape to back up all the circumstantial evidence she had.

He leapt, taking hold of the top of the wall then using his momentum and the hold he had on it flipped over the wall with a small kick. Landing on his feet he was already off before the shock of the rather hard impact with the concrete truly registered.

Turning a corner down a narrow street he instinctively veered off, away from the stray of brick that exploded next to his shoulder as he rounded the corner of the building.

There were two more blocks to the street, if he managed not get hit he was going to make it and disappear in the crowd. The dogs won't chance exposure and civilian deaths – it was too noticeable and their job was the exact opposite. In the park no one would have given a second look to their abduction but out on the street it was different. Too many eyes and too many mouths connected to them, though Wufei knew from personal experience that men like the ones chasing him weren't averse to gassing the whole street into eternal silence to get to their targets.

It was as if some cruel god was listening to his thoughts because just as the street came into view he felt the exploding pressure in his shoulder, closely followed by the burning pain. Stumbling he caught the wall and chanced a glance down to see the small red spot on his t-shirt start to grow as blood gushed from the exit wound. His eyes slid over his shoulder and he saw the man gaining on him, ejecting an empty clip and reaching for a reload. Grinding his teeth he forced himself to continue moving, to get his legs straight and running instead of stumbling.

Just his damned luck that the guy would get him with the last bullet in the clip. He simply knew Duo would have a field day with that if he lived and if the braided maniac hadn't gotten himself caught.

Instinct that had been honed while running from a OZ squadron with little to no cover Wufei set off on an erratic path down the street, head low between his shoulders as he let his gut do that little magical prediction all the Gundam pilots were known for and tell him when to move. The bullets flew again.

Just a few more feet. He could see the bustling street as he ran in front of a car moving that appeared in the small street separating him from his salvation. The horn blew and he almost stumbled once more but managed to ghost in front of the vehicle, hearing the beaks behind him then the thump as his pursuer hit the hood.

I burst onto the street and immediately turned left to move away, using the distraction of the man behind me. I had already sighted a likely cafe just a little ways down the sidewalk that would be ideal to use. It had a backdoor and even if it didn't I could see it was connected to the buildings on its sides.

I had to kill my speed for both the people that were suddenly in my way and because the shot was starting to make itself known. It must be bad if it could get trough the adrenalin rush that I was on.

I could smell the scent of breakfast from the café when the feeling of hard heated metal against the small of my back stopped me and an arm took hold of my wounded shoulder.

Then the van was there, doors opening and another man jumping down from the driver's seat to come help my captor.

I don't know why but the voice in my head that sometimes peeked out in such situations had Duo's voice.

The 'Shit' it inserted was rather fitting of the situation.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Sorry for the long wait but both time and inspiration is something I seem to be lacking these days. I'll do my best to update sooner next time. Also I'm on the lookout for a beta or if you know someone who could be willing drop me a line, hm?

Chapter 7

There was a loud noise, a gun shooting, a splash of red, screams.

"C'mon Wuffers"

Wufei uncurled like a snake striking out and Duo ducked the kick, unlike the dead man who had gone down as soon as the gun had broken his concentration. Meeting Wufei's eyes he reached over and took hold of his unwounded arm with the hand that wasn't holding a gun and gave him a start.

They were running full speed, leaving behind the screams and honking of cars as pedestrians cut trough the road to get away from the shooting. Laughing Duo grinned at Wufei.

"Chaos, panic and death! My work here is done!" he crowed

Just then there was a screech of car brakes and Heero's metallic car nailed to a stop in front of them, nearly running them over. Throwing open the door to the front seat for Wufei Heero was already speeding off before the Chinese was fully in and Duo fought to close the door in the back.

"Hot damn! Une's pets are getting better!" he laughed even as he was reaching over to tie the t-shirt he'd taken off around Wufei's bleeding shoulder.

Heero didn't react to this as he took a corner on three wheels.

Wufei breathed trough his nose, feeling the adrenalin pumping trough his veins, knowing it was stalling the shock of the shot wound.

"That's tight enough" he said, voice calm but vibrating with suppressed violence" Are you ok?" he asked throwing a look from Heero to Duo.

"Hn" Heero nodded sharply as he weaved trough traffic causing a few minor incidents.

"Yeah, yeah. Shaken but not stirred"

Wufei raised a brow at him.

"Did you have to learn how to do that or is it natural?" Duo asked cocking his head to one side than swaying bodily in the same direction as the car did a ninety and shot off the main street.

Managing to buckle his seatbelt at last Wufei leaned back into the seat.

"Natural, all natural" he sighed feeling the shot of pain pulse trough his arm and back at another sharp turn.

"Damn, some got it all for free! Can I get a refund?"

The apartment building came into view and Wufei sat up.

"Yuy! You're insane…!"

"We need to take something from the apartment" he said evenly as he shot inside the underground garage, steering with one arm while the other went to his back and came out with a Glock.

Seeing the black minibus parked in front of the elevator Wufei reached a hand over his seat and felt the butt of a handgun being placed firmly in it. Closing his good hand over it he sent a small thanks that he'd been hit in the left shoulder.

The weapon in his hand was Preventer issue, had belonged to the driver of the first minivan before Duo shot him.

"Very poor form Fei, very poor. Didn't 'cha mama tell you not to leave da house without a damned cannon?"

"I did not plan a shoot-out in my lunch plans"

Behind him he heard the click of a clip and the release of a safety before Duo snickered.

"So it wasn't you who ordered the side dish of lead?"

The sound of bullets piercing the car muffled his words and they all ducked as one hit the front window leaving a hole and a web of cracks in its wake.

"Ready" Heero's emotionless voice warned them a second before he hit the brakes, doing a side slide, barreling into the minivan behind which the men had taken position.

"Ohhh that's gonna leave a nasty scratch Hee-man" Duo tsk-ed as he threw open the door and rolled out of the car ending in a position over the trunk and opening fire to accompany Heero who slid out of his seat and out in the small space between their car and the van, where it had bounced back after the hit. He was already targeting and efficiently executing any the men who had gotten caught between the van and the wall.

Wufei followed Duo's example and shot down a man who unseen from his comrades' vantage was trying to come around at their backs.

Three minutes later the garage was silent except for the hiss of the smoking van and a choked gurgle from one of the men.

The three pilots took a second to make sure they were clear before Heero stood fully and with a small grunt moved the front of the minivan from blocking the elevator.

"Should we?" Wufei asked as the doors opened with a small 'ping'. Heero shot the camera as he walked in.

"Yeah, we've got full control of the building's systems" Duo said easily and punched the floor number.

As they rode Wufei adjusted the t-shirt around his shoulder and checked to see how much ammunition he had left. Five bullets in that clip.

"They don't know the apartment number" he said not really asking.

"They know a number" Duo said and hearing the smirk in the words Wufei threw him a side look and gave a small growl of acknowledgement.

"They are going to see the floor number on the elevator" he added, keeping his mind from the pain in the shoulder.

"Right you are so we'd better shake a leg" the elevator pinged the floor and Duo sniffed" Heero'll take care of the door"

They exited the elevator cautiously with Duo in the lead giving the 'all-clear' with his hand. Heero passed them and with a precise kick brought the door down, splintering the wood and enforced plastic around the knob, and took position at the door, gun out.

"Don't forget the ZAI " was all he said as Duo passed him on his way inside and received a one-finger salute for probably reminding his partner of something obvious.

Wufei looked from Duo to Heero, this was their call, then took position on Heero's other side and scanned the left side of the corridor and the stairs.

Duo appeared not thirty seconds later with one of Wufei's duffels, the one holding his weapons and his sword and a second one that looked half-empty. He tossed Wufei his and Heero the other while he himself had an Uzi in one hand, the gun tucked in the back of his jeans.

On their way down Wufei took his own handgun out and made sure he had a couple of spare clips in his pockets before tucking it in his waistband. He wasn't going to waste ammunition and the Preventer's pistol still had five bullets in it.

With Duo in the lead they descended to the garage. The resistance was pitiful and soon they had it secured once again.

"Fei you 'n me will be going in your car. I'm driving." was all Duo said extending a hand to Wufei for the keys while he threw Heero the keys to his own car.

Wufei pressed the alarm button and threw the key over the hood to Duo who snatched it out of the air. The two fell into the seats at the same time and Duo had the car moving before Wufei finished clapping the four-point belt of the sports car.

The braided man worked the car like a whore – hard, fast and without consideration to the wheels which smoked at the track-start.

Then they were flying out of the garage and Duo wretched the car to the right at the last moment before he collided with the Preventer vehicle that was waiting there.

Giving a chilling laugh he slid the stick to the last gear and firmly took hold of the wheel with both hands. The traffic just after the lunch hours had thinned but was never-the-less there but the God of Death had no prejudices about using any available surface as a road including the sidewalk, scattering the pedestrians screaming and brushing one with the side of the car, mowing through the cafes and a small vendor's fold-in table.

The ride was a nightmare and Wufei knew that if his belt wasn't on the least he would have already had was a concussion and perhaps something broken. As it was his shot wound was sending out very clear messages in the Morse codes of painful throbs and burning waves of agony as it was wretched along with Wufei himself.

He could hear the bullets pinging on the car from time to time but the Preventers wouldn't risk hitting a civilian in such an obvious matter. Unlike them Wufei had no such problems.

As soon as they hit Central Boulevard he unbuckled half of his belt then opened the window and drew his right shoulder, head and half of his upper-body out of it, thanked that his hair was so tightly bound back that even at the insane sped they were going only a handful snapped in front of his face and returned fire, not wasting bullets.

He took careful aim, disregarding the sound of a bullet peeling the paint not a few inches from him and fired at the pursuing vehicle's front right tire. It took him four of the five bullets in the Preventer's gun and he used the last trying to get the shooter but then Duo swiveled at last, no longer able to keep the trajectory straight enough and Wufei's shot hit the car in the neighboring lane, making the driver lose control in his fright and drive its front in the Preventers' back, spinning them out of control in combination with the flat tire.

Falling in his seat with the car's next jerk Wufei struggled to belt in again.

"Damn, ya haven't lost yur touch after all Wuffers" Duo shouted over the sudden chaos of blaring horns around them, not looking away from the road, weaseling the car trough the traffic with suicidal ease.

Feeling the adrenalin that had been running short pulse trough him once more, dulling the pain, Wufei grinned, a fierce, violent grin that would have surprised Duo had he been able to look at him without turning them and the car into a tinned minced meat.

"You have no idea" he answered in a normal voice but somehow he thought Duo heard him anyway.

As they left the Central Boulevard Duo lowered the speed and drove well within the speed limit as they made their way trough the edges of the city and some of its more unfavorable blocks.

The expensive car stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the misery and decay of their surroundings but Duo didn't seem to care. They circled around the blocks some, going in a mangled circle before Duo pulled over in an alley. The end of the alley was a wall of solid steel, or so it looked before the steel cracked open and one wing of a set of large doors opened under a man pushing.

A rather large figure walked out and gestured shortly in a universal "Move that fat ass fucker and get in" gesture.

Grinning at the man Duo rolled the car trough the door, making a small turn, and Wufei blinked to clear his vision suddenly with the sound of the heavy metal door closing behind him, finding himself in the artificially lighted enormous garage.

The place was huge and Wufei's mind hurriedly supplied him with the observation that the garage probably occupied the condemned building that was to the right of the alley they had driven in. The ceiling, or floor depending, of the second and third floors of the five-story building had been removed and cranes and other heavy machinery was installed and operated by a small army of men to create a honest Preventer's nightmare – the largest stolen cars garage Wufei had ever heard of.

" Maxwell! You damned idiotic suicidal son ofa plagued bitch! You were over the goddamned news you longhaired freak!" the large man that had been at the door was striding over, voice booming and making the men around him scatter.

Duo was stepping out of the car already and Wufei followed though with some trouble as his wound throbbed angrily at him.

"Do NOT fuckin' mention the do or ya're deadmeat, got it Flux?" he growled but it wasn't as spirited as Wufei had seen him on different occasions.

"I'll fuckin' mention what I goddamned wanna fucker! Ya're hotter than hell! Why in the name of all shitty things didja land in MY garage!"

The two were just a couple of inches apart then and glaring at each other, the man breathing heavily.

Slowly Duo raised a brow.

The man glared.

Duo's other brow joined the first.

The man looked away and snarled something unintelligible before his eyes landed on Wufei who stood quietly observing while leaning on the car with his good side and holding his left arm in his right.

"And you hatta bring someone ta bleed all ova' my floor too!" he growled but the growl had lost its bite.

"We need ya'r sniffer" Duo's firm voice cut him off from ranting on and froze him.

"Move it" the man snarled, thankfully not reaching to take hold of Wufei to help him along.

As soon as the word sniffer left Duo's lips Wufei already knew what was happening and resisted the urge to shoot himself with no small effort.

Hurrying after them Wufei had time to ask only one question.

"Why aren't they already here?" and received a one-word answer that was as good as a detailed explanation on hacking and signal scrambling.

"Heero"

Then he was being shoved none too gently in a small metal cabin and a small blue light blinked to life in the dim confines that were not larger than a coffin.

A small ping sounded while Wufei contemplated that the equipment he was in was at first glance even better than Preventers' best, and a thin beam of a laser lit beneath his feet, covering the whole width of the cabin and slowly started climbing up, the red light sliding over his wrinkled clothes and then over his bloodied shoulder. Closing his eyes Wufei saw the light penetrate his eyelids for a second before moving on.

There were a few moments after that before the door of the cabin hissed open and a hand pulled him out. His eyes opened, his mind processing that the blood loss made it difficult to do so and he had time to see Duo's grim face before the felt the sting of a tranquilizer gun on the side of his neck.

The light started to fade to gray and he had only a second to give a barely noticeable nod to the violet eyes before the world was flushed away by the darkness of unconsciousness.

"…fei. C'mon, time to wakey, wakey!"

At fist Wufei had a fuzzily thought he was dreaming then he opened his eyes and dreaming was substituted by hallucinating.

The first thing he saw was pink. Lots and lots of pink – ping hangings, pink walls, pink carpet.

He blinked, mind unwilling to start comprehending. His eyes started to shut closed again.

"Now, now" a vague feeling of something on his cheek, patting it" Don't shut out again. C'mon have a something to drink"

Something touched his lips and he opened his eyes again to see the face hanging in front of him. The thing on his lips pressed and he opened them feeling the trickle of liquid in his numb mouth. He swallowed on reflex and something white flashed on the face above him.

It took him another blink before he decided that the face, Duo his mind informed him, was smiling at him.

"Ata boy. Now let's lift you a little"

An arm wrapped around his shoulder and he was brought up for a dizzying moment before he was settled back down, only not as low as before. He continued to blink.

"Whe…" his voice gave out as he tried asking and the glass of water was pressed against his lips again.

The cool liquid soothed its way trough his mouth and throat, giving him a little more feeling from them. Licking his lips he tried again.

"Where?" his voice was hoarse but the question was understandable.

"Somewhere safe. Don't worry"

" Is it …" his voice broke and the glass was on his lips again as Duo pre-empted what he wanted to know.

"We took out the tracker but you had surgery. It was in your hip bone. He took care of the bullet wound too. A couple of hours in the regen unit and you're as good as new. It might be tender for a while and we didn't have time to make sure it won't scar but I think you don't care about that anyway"

Wufei gave a small nod and rested full back into the pillows. His eyes started to slip closed but he snapped them open hurriedly.

His mind seemed to be coming out of the daze that had undoubtedly been heavily drugged and the situation he found himself in was coming to the forefront of his mind. He looked at Duo's face, noticing that his vision was clearer than a few minutes ago.

"Heero will be here in an hour then we're blowing this joint. The Doc said you'll be fully functional in a day, two at most"

Wufei blinked, slow to absorb the information.

"Good" he said at last, then he thought again and added" Where will we be going?"

Duo's nose twitched and he rubbed at it.

"We're going to visit a friend of ours. But don't worry about that now. Lets get you up and ready, hm?"

Slowly after a few seconds Wufei nodded then allowed Duo to help him up.

Throwing his arm around his neck Wufei decided he would wait until his mind was fully functional before asking more. He knew enough to be satisfied for the moment and in the end it didn't really matter. He'd decided it already – his sword and his life belonged to his friends.

As he pushed himself to recover some balance his eyes caught a fuzzy brown bear the size of a man with a giant baby pink bow leaning in one corner of the room. Against the pink wall.

Turning to Duo he blinked and before he could stop his mouth was already opening.

"Are in Peacecraft's room?", he asked and decided that he hated being drugged.

Duo next to him looked at him strangely for a second then looked around and burst laughing, shaking and nearly loosing his hold on the Asian.

"N-no, we're in the Doc's kid's room" he said stuffing his chuckles.

Wufei was glad that Duo didn't look at him, making sure they didn't fall, because in his drugged state he couldn't help the quirk of his lips not, he was sure, the way he was looking at him.

Heero arrived forty-five minutes later and helped Wufei to the back seat of the dark green jeep he had parked behind the Doc's house. He was better at least the fuzz was gone from his brain but as the drugs wore off he became aware of a deep ache in his left thigh that stabbed trough it crawling up the inside of it as he tried to step on it.

He'd not seen anyone as they passed trough the house and heard no sounds then Duo had explained that the Doc lived alone and had an underground extension of the house where he worked. His daughter and wife were dead as far the braided man knew, killed in an Gundam attack on an OZ base. The man had been the on-sight medic.

Wufei hadn't asked which Gundam it had been. He didn't wan to know. Duo told him anyway, seemingly finding morbid fascination with the tragedy.

The man hadn't wanted his family on-sight when he'd been called from his city post but the station was deep into the Amazonian jungle and the nearest settlement had been a day's flight with a chopper or a five day hellish drive trough nearly-there roads. It seemed the man's wife had been deeply in love with him and accidentally the daughter of the stations' head so with a little rule-bending she, as a nurse, and her daughter had been smuggled in.

The hit had come almost before the war's moving to space.

Unknown to the Doc at the time the station had been used for Mobile Doll research.

Wufei had had to fight to keep from showing his tension as Duo described in detail the horror that he attack had been for the man, the mind numbing terror of seeing his wife and daughter scattered into bits of bloody flesh while he faded under a fallen support beam.

He'd survived and quietly joined the resistance. He'd traveled with them as a medic and learned how to fight in the mean time.

After the war ended he continued to travel until he found his ex-wife's father then he'd killed him and retired to work illegally for us, as Duo had said. Wufei was yet to be told who Us is. He had the feeling that whatever he knew from his work for Une was but the top of an enormous iceberg.

Then he'd dropped it – the identity of the Gundam who'd killed the doctor's family.

Gundam 04, Sandrock.

The ride was long and Wufei dozed off a few times, the pain in his leg starting to ebb away as promised. The last time he woke they were surrounded by threes and the ground felt more like a rocky path than anything. From what he could discern he decided they were in a mountain.

The forest suddenly opened to a small clearing with a wooden hut in the middle.

Inside it looked like any other with a fireplace two beds, a table and a cooker that worked on wood. Then they went down to the basement.

Wufei looked at the racks of servers, the monitors and general strangeness of the machinery that packed the room after the absolute lack of civilization of the last five hours of road and the almost bare hut.

Heero and Duo sat down in front of the two terminals and started working and Wufei settled against the door. Five minutes later with a heavy silence hanging over them since Duo stopped chattering half-way up the path there, the clicking from his terminal stopped and Duo stood up then went to one of the servers and shimmied behind it. There was a clatter then a hiss and a small shot of sparks from where only a dark-clad foot stuck out.

"Crude" came Heero's voice.

Duo grinned at his back and leanedon the side of Heero's monitor.

"But effective. You nearly done?" he asked jovially.

"Five minutes.

"Cool. What damage?"

"20 of the systems will be shut down, 35 of the network is no longer secure" there was a pause"29" he amended with a final click he stood up" This is all we can do from here"

Duo's nose brunched up in annoyance.

"I'll be kicking some serious butt very soon" he stated then crouched behind a rack and did something that was followed by the appearance of a timers on both terminals counting backwards from ten minutes.

Duo grinned.

"I love to make things go kaboom"

Wufei arched an amused brow. There was something big going on. Something very big.

A/N: That little cute button that says "Review" is there for you to click and tell me how either you are madly in love with the story and can't wait for more or just how badly I managed to mangle it and how bad it is. Either way I'd be happy to know, or at least be none-homicidal if its constructive criticism. +innocent grin+


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: And here comes the plot! Hehe, I am fond of not explaining things so there are many things underneath the underneath as Kakashi loves to say, that are connected as much to the previous chapters as well as the future of the story. A cookie to those who see where I'm aiming.!

Chapter 8 (A roomful of killers)

It took them another four hours to get to a town called Mensweep where they gathered their duffels and abandoned the car in the woods before going to the small airport of the establishment.

A rather jovial man in his late thirties greeted them asking if they were there for the mountain trip which was met with stony silence, a dark level look and Duo's grin which after all the adrenalin and danger of the last couple of days was just on the edge of sharp. The man faltered and after Duo's so-so polite brush off, slinked off to whatever work he had.

It was another half an hour before the hum of engines reached them and a middle-sized jet prepared for landing. As soon as the jet touched down the man from the sorry excuse of a tower came rushing out obviously flustered. Well, who wouldn't be when an unidentified jet simply ignored their calls and landed with barely half an hour to the arrival of a tourist jet.

The three ex-gundam pilots didn't spare a glance at the man as they stood and made their way to the door of the jet that had just dropped open. A young man in fatigues stood at it and closed it as soon as they crossed. Wufei, being the last on caught a glimpse of the harrowed man's pale face and disbelieving eyes, before the darkness of the jet's belly cut it off.

Turning to the insides of the jet it became obvious tat it wasn't meant to have passengers as Duo and Heero were already wedging themselves between a couple of secured crates and the man in the fatigues was climbing in the co-pilot's seat without looking back.

Wufei studied the tense back of the man as it disappeared in behind the seat and followed his friends' example by occupying the space across the other two against another crate and some kind of a box that was bolted to the floor of the jet.

"Prepare for take off" came the warning, shouted over the whirl of the engines before Wufei felt the machine tear away from the ground.

His muscles clenched, his feet digging into the box, and his back into the crate, then relaxing as the machine settled into flight. His eyes flitted over to the two across from him and saw Heero taking out a palmtop and Duo lean back, half-closing his eyes. The braided maniac looked rather calm but then his eyes opened a millimeter and slid to meet Wufei's then were back by a quick flash of a familiar manic grin.

"We have at least five hours of flight" he said, the grin giving way to a yawn before the eyes slid back to that peculiar, almost medative-like position.

Wufei took another look at Heero who looked up long enough to meet his eyes with his own, forcing Wufei to look away from the stormy marbles.

Following Duo's suggestion Wufei made sure he was well positioned and slowly put himself into a light state of restful meditation.

The heat of the desert was like a physical blow after the cool belly of the jet and Wufei appreciated the sunglasses and the length of cloth that covered his head and partly his face.

The same man who he'd seen before, the co-pilot, had presented them with them before they left the jet, having his own on and even trough the glasses Wufei knew the man was avoiding looking into their eyes. He wondered if the pilots had any idea who they had transported and who had paid them but a look at his friends made him shrug his questions off. He wasn't there to question. He was there to do what his friends requested from him and finally do the right thing.

The sand crawled into his boots even though they were on the pavement of the small airport but he paid it no mind as he entered the hangar, watching Duo talk to someone before gesturing to him and Heero to follow and jumped into a door that someone had uncovered.

For the first time since the wars he saw the face of the large Arabian man waiting to take them deeper into the reveled enormous complex.

Duo of course was immediately heartily shaking hands with Rashid, asking after his family. Or what was left of his family.

Quatre wasn't there and their stay was less than three hours, two of which Wufei spent 'resting' while his companions disappeared without a word. It seemed Wufei would have to win their trust the hard way. But it was ok, he wanted to. Needed to - to prove himself before his own conscience.

Still it nagged him.

The sun was setting over the rolling sand dunes, red, bloody and hot when they boarded another plane, this time the destination was Sanq.

They arrived in the middle of the night and slid out the cargo plane without even seeing their pilots.

The air was chill, smelling of burned kerosene and rubber. The light of the spotlights left them in the plane's long shadow as they slipped away, like they didn't even exist.

His body felt the abrupt change in the temperature, his head was still ringing from the ride in the cargo bay where he'd wished he still had his Gundam. Despite the life and death situation he went into with it Wufei would have greatly preferred that over the cold and unfitted for any kind of passengers belly of the plane. The fact that his recently healed operations made themselves knows after the abuse he had been dealing to his systems the last day or so wasn't helping to improve his mood any.

Heero lead the way around the small airport and to a car, parked behind some junk on the side of the chain-link fence, and took the driver's seat.

Wufei noticed his stiff movements, the way his face didn't give anything away. It was as if Yuy had gone into soldier-mode, as Duo liked to call the condition each of them entered before going into a heavy battle.

But the fact was each one's was different and the obviousness of Heero's retreat was too extreme for what Wufei knew of the current circumstances.

"Yo, soldier boy, snap out of it. We're not killing her, just helping her go in the right direction", Duo said suddenly, hitting the driver in the shoulder none-too-gently.

Heero blinked a couple of times and relaxed but only by a margin. At least Wufei didn't feel like he was riding with an automated human anymore.

"Better but still not quite. C'mon. dun make me give ya a blow job before Wufferes here. It would be a shame for him to die from a nosebleed after all the shit he's pulled trough."

Wufei's eyes widened without his permission and he could almost feel a bit of color rising but he suppressed his silly reaction quickly enough by concentration on the fact that Duo's 'threat' had once again lessened the tension in Wing's pilot.

"Good boy, but you're still too tense. We can't have you going into soldier-mode in the middle of the mission…"

He saw the grinning maniac's hand slide over the space between the front seats and averted his gaze to watch the gray dawn outside, letting his concentration become a light meditation when Heero groaned lowly.

The car didn't even swivel as Heero gave little growls and Duo's hand worked in his lap. Wufei had almost managed to beat down the blood that had been heading to both his cheeks and between his thighs when the car gave a lurch and turned sharply right.

In his surprise his gaze snapped ahead and his body moved forward so he could see between the seats.

Wufei's lips started to form a question before his eyes took in the scene and the car stopped at the side of the road. His lips stayed open though no breath came trough to form a question as his eyes were reverted to the sight of Heero Yuy's face in the midst of an orgasm. It was…beautiful.

No, in no way the normal concept of beautiful but it was the only word Wufei could come up, for it was – for him.

And most of all it was in all probability addicting for he couldn't look away until something warm on his cheek brought conscious thought and sent his eyes flying in Duo's direction, unable to stop them from widening past the hand on his cheek.

Duo was smiling, his fingertips slowly sliding away, making a shudder run down Wufei's spine. It was making his heart thump in his chest and he sucked in the delayed breath, looking into the nearly violet eyes with incomprehension. The fingertips ghosted over his lips leaving something warm and liquid over his lower lip before retreating. Then the smile turned into a grin and Wufei realized what the warm smudge on his lip was.

He fell back into the seat and his hand rose to his lips to wipe, his eyes still locked on Duo's, but his hand stopped a hair's breath away and he just…couldn't continue. His gaze flickered to the left and met Heero's half-lidded one as the other man turned in his seat.

His mouth moved as if to form a word but Duo cut him off.

"Opps! Sorry about that", but he didn't sound sorry at all.

He started to lean over from the front seat, reaching for Wufei's face again. Again, as if on its own command Wufei's hand shot up and caught his wrist, stopping him. Black eyes flickered from one man to the other, from blue to violet and back before closing in helplessness. Slowly his parted lips closed, folded and his tongue slid between them, opening them again.

His breath heaved and his heart thundered as he felt the tiny bit of saltiness on his tongue. He knew his reaction was obvious but he felt as if something was giving away, inside him. Something lodged there, weighting him for as long as he could remember, that had been growing with every night back to back with Meiran, every empty kiss of Sally's, every night when he would wish away the images his imagination formed while his hand was his only companion.

"Fei…", Duo's voice was low and heated.

"Heero,", Wufei said, trying to control his breath, " drive."

He released Duo's wrist and turned to open his eyes, looking out the window. Ignoring the heavy gazes until Heero revived the engine, sliding the car back on the road.

Everything was quiet save for Duo's tinkering with the radio. They were giving him his space. After all this was a kind of a victory to them, he supposed.

They stationed a makeshift base in a small motel which was obviously not going to ask questions of their nocturnal habits, comings and goings.

Wufei had successfully managed to ignore anything pertaining the memory from the car and his two companions seem to accept that as they readied.

It had become obvious they were in Sanq and Wufei was starting to have his doubts as to the nature of their presence there when he put the calculations trough his mind and tentatively came out with the conclusion that a certain Princess was involved.

Heero seemed tense again but Duo kept rubbing against him at odd time, acting as a human shock-therapy, generating enough static sexual charge to force the Perfect Soldier into something a little more human.

Still they weren't telling Wufei any specifics but he followed, almost blindly. There were voices in his head that tried to argue that this was the same thing, the same mistake, the same weakness, he had given into before, and for which he had paid a dear price twice over. The voices were mercilessly killed as Wufei knew, somehow he simply did, that he was finally doing what he should have done from the very beginning.

His search of himself, his loss of the Way, had not become so desperate until he had lost view of the very beginning. And in the beginning was him, alone, as he had always been.

There had been a time when this had been challenged – by his clan, by…Meiran – but that time had passed. Whatever sins and transgressions they had seen in him he had paid in blood and he had avenged them all, trying to rail himself into their expectations, serving their ghosts trough a whole war. He had given them closure. It was time he found his.

And despite the barren scape of his so-called soul he knew this was the way. Side-by-side with the only people on this earth and off it that could know his struggles, his pain.

And he was delving into rhetoric once more. How strange.

He made sure his gun wouldn't be seen under his bomber jacket and turned to Duo for further instructions.

The braided maniac grinned and sat him down in front of Heero's laptop, next to their third member.

"Ok, Wuffie, its time you were brought up to speed"

Wufei didn't deign this with a verbal answer but his heavy "you don't say" gaze was enough.

A media file started on the laptop – a recording of last-night's news.

The others' proximity had been a little distracting to Wufei, especially when Duo leaned over his shoulder, his breath ghosting over his neck, but hearing and seeing the report erased all such thing.

"In a special official meeting lat night the ESUN Council of Martial Matters has decided upon the much controversial Peacecraft – Une act, the synopsis of which has been said to be the merciless prosecution of wartime criminals.

The new decree will be put into immediate application with the help of Preventers and CMM whereupon many ex-army personnel will be facing not the to-date lesser punishment of a couple of years of light-time imprisonment but heavy sentences from ten years to life.

When questioned upon the moral adequacy of the tightening measures in a society where total pacifism is supposed to be more than an ideal the former Queen of the world Relena Peacecraft has sad that: " Despite the people's brave efforts peace needs a strong foundation and such can not be built upon the shaky grounds of an insecure society where even one person fears their wartime abuser" , while current Head of Preventers Peacekeeping Agency, former lieutenant to Treize Kusherenada – Lady Une gave a rather curt answer:" We must protect the peace we have achieved trough so much suffering and this act is a step in the right direction."

Other members of the CMM have either been unavailable for comment or have give rather neutral opinions concerning the new Act. "

Wufei was not surprised – he had caught whiff of the Act before though he didn't know the exact content.

Heero had reached over and started the next file.

"…this breaking news. Furthermore the act states that any person who has taken action against a person while outside of direct orders under their military commander or if they had performed inhumane acts when in an coherent state of mind and free will, will be receiving an immediate life sentence in the newly approved Fort Siberia, formerly an OZ prison, known for its harsh conditions…"

Heero clicked again.

"…as many humanists and politicians over the world show their discontent with the new measures, going as far as calling them inhumane and a strike against equality between humans and the currents peace. They caution that the new measures may force ex-military personnel, who had until now been integrated in society, putting behind their war-time grievances, into feeling threatened, despite their innocence in following orders during a time of war. If that is to occur a large increase in terrorist action is expected as well as a general rise of crime, especially violent crimes…"

The recording was cut off and Wufei leaned back, acutely aware of how that brought him almost cheek to cheek with Duo and studiously ignoring it, as he thought the news over.

"They are coming after us"

He felt Duo press his cheek against his.

"Yes"

"So we are going to blow up half the parliament so we can prove the enemies of the act true? ", he asked taking a bite out of the take-out Chinese.

"Yes….and no" , answered Heero but his fingers didn't pause their staccato over the laptop, his blue eyes glinting like ice as he confirmed the preliminary data..

Wufei looked up from viewing his own work of sharpening his sword.

"I'd like to hear the No, because I'm sure you know they will use the bombing as an example of why the act is needed "

"Hn"

Wufei didn't even pause at the lack of answer.

"Duo?"

"What he means is that this is also, gimme that red wire woudja? Thanks. So the fact is there is a lot more brewing than that surface political propaganda bullshit. The rats are packin' Fei and Une's the queen rat"

Somehow the fact that Une might be planning a coup and using Relena's naivety to put away the largest threat – the Gundam Pilots, was not surprising. Far from it.

They might have been five boys but there was no just there and they had, single-handedly defeated two armies. They were a force of nature. His eyes flittered to the form sitting in front of the glowing laptop and the braided head, bent over a table with enough explosives to blow up half the city block, both working their weapon of choice like it was a part of them, like the killer in them was spilling out into their every move.

Wufei smirked as he ran the wet stone over his weapon's edge. A roomful of killers.

Let Une try stand against them.

"The meeting of the Council will be in the West wing while the east is under renovations and closed. We will plant the charges there", Duo moved a couple of said charges and showed them the blueprint of the East wing", Here, here and here. It would destroy the support columns if effect bringing down the wing with minimal damage to the central part of the building"

Wufei knew that this wasn't something Duo was guessing. He had calculated the power of the blast against the building's resistance and engineering, taken in mind the surroundings, the ground support of the Sanq soil and many, many other things until he knew it would be perfect.

"So we are going to bring the building on their heads?" Wufei couldn't help but answer Duo's bloodthirsty grin with a smirk of his own.

"Oh, yes. I think several tones of concrete and marble would beat some sense into the rats, ne, Heero?"

Heero simply grunted as he snatched a printout from under Wufei's hand and was back as the laptop, one hand typing faster than most people typed with two, and the other crossing lines of nearly meaningless to Wufei numbers.

"Une thinks she's so smart having her little meeting right under the real parliament's nose but she has another thing coming, the bitch. Little cockroaches, two-timing greedy sons ofa bitches. Well show um what happens when they think their little table games can fuck with us"

Wufei ran the oiled rag over the slide of his pistol as he listened to Duo's rant. It seemed the L2 pilot was personally offended by this, not that he didn't have reason to be, but Wufei himself was seeing it as more of a political issue. After all in the eyes of the politicians and those like Une they were simply "the Gundam pilots". They weren't Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre and Wufei, hell they weren't Yuy or Barton either, they were that threat to their power-hungry swipes that happens to wear the faces of five boys, nearly men.

He wondered what the other two-fifths of that equation were going to do about it.

Wufei was dreaming. There was no other explanation. But...oh god…

"Do you like it Wufei?", oh god that voice, violet" like …_this_…", and those lips and tongue…oh god.

"Wufei"

So blue, so strong. Overpowering, he wanted to give himself up, loose himself…

Strong hands on his back, leaving trails of fire and nimble fingers working…oh god…Nataku…forgive me…

He woke up with a gasp to the sight of amused violet eyes and a smirk.

Duo was curled up like a cat on a small armchair, one eye opened and visible trough his fringe while in the background Heero was sitting, bathed in the cold glow of the ever-present laptop.

Wufei fought to keep his panting from becoming audible but lost as he slumped back, feeling a coolness wetting the front of his pants. How humiliating.

He closed his eyes, wanting it to go away and the comfortable, well known numbness to settle. It did, in part.

He opened his eyes and Duo was back asleep, Heero was still at it on the final touches of the plan – making sure nothing had changed in the last hours.

Wufei didn't want to sleep lest he dreamt again but he had to. Tomorrow would be busy but he couldn't sleep anymore in fear that his dreams would betray him again.

Unfolding from his reclining position on the armchair he crossed the room to the bathroom, trying to ignore the state of his pants.

Taking a cool shower he changed his clothes with his only spares and washed the old ones. Taking a couple of hangers from the corridor wardrobe he hung them in the room where he expected them to dry by the time their mission was to start – the weather had turned really quite warm for late spring.

He wanted to go outside, remove himself from the presences that troubled him so much and yet soothed him, but he couldn't. It'd be a security risk and no matter his discomfort he would in no way endanger his friends or the mission. As a compromise he sat on the floor, settled his back against the wall and sank in the calming sea of meditation.

"We have to use he last opportunity to put the charges or there is a possibility some of them would be found", Duo was explaining again, but it looked like it was more for the benefit of himself than Heero or Wufei – after all he was the one with the lest patience.

"They sweep the place every three hours, the last sweep would be right before the rats scurried in and then again an hour into the meeting, Une sure is a paranoid bitch.", he was pacing, his braid swinging from side to side as he altered his course.

"So we have an hour to get in, plant, then get ourselves out and blow the shit", he paused, his nose wrinkled, reminding Wufei of a thoughtful cat, and any second….Ah, there I was – the grin when it finally settled just how 'exiting' this little operation was going to be.

"My little birdie will contact us if there are any last-minute changes that are not broadcasted over the channels", Wufei looked at Heero who had been monitoring said channels most of their time there and would have pulled off a twelve-hour shift if Wufei hadn't practically kicked him out of the chair earlier. After all there was only so much rest one could get and Wufei was used to very short naps, in fact since his 'deflection' he'd slept more than he had in the last couple of months combined. Of course there was the matter of his wounds but even with then Heero had had the lest amount of rest from what it seemed.

Wufei didn't want him on a mission with himself if the Perfect Soldier was in play.

Wufei understood Duo's actions in the car only too well. The Perfect Soldier was a perfect tool for executing missions with the small side note that he was liable to do the same to his own team if they were caught in a very tight situation and it would allow a tactical advantage –say leaving two of the three to escape. After all two of three was a far better end to a mission than one or none.

Wufei lifted the pans once more, overlaying the lines with the pictures of the security cameras Heero had hacked, in his head.

The guard would be tight, nigh impossible to infiltrate, the shifts overlapping, routes too – there was no blind spot. Une was justly paranoid.

Wufei chuckled. You weren't paranoid if they _are_ out to get you.

* * *

A/N: Reviews are my muse's bread and water (ok, maybe double chocolate-chip chocolate ice-cream XD) - feed the muse! 


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 5 (A different kind of beautiful)

A/N: As I seem prone to POV change I think it prudent to mention this starts as Heero's.

"Time. 0900", I made sure I heard the click from both of the other watches as my own clicked in tandem. There were few things more fundamentally important on a mission that pertained explosives than timing. Those five seconds could and have saved all our lives at some point.

"Got it. Give me five before starting the counter, 'k?", Duo chirped. Yes, chirped, as there is no other logical word to describe his almost gleeful and energetic tone. My Shinigami really did thrive on this. The God of Death is a workaholic.

I nodded and quirked him a half smile to let him know what I was thinking, catching a somewhat similar expression on Wufei's face out of the corner of my eye.

Duo got out of the car casually, dressed like any other young man in Sanq fashion and with a cap hiding his braid. He waved cheerfully and waked away with his hands in his pockets.

He will be going a few blocks to where he'd stashed his supplies early this morning before taking position to await to give and then receive our signal.

I drove away with moderate speed, keeping to the speed limit and taking care not to gather any attention. The car was helping – a somewhat old thing that was so often seen on the streets of Sanq it would be a wonder if we could be traced by camera surveillance alone.

The silence in the car wasn't stiffing. Wufei's presence wasn't the same as my Shinigami's but it did fill the empty space that made me…uncomfortable. Duo said it made me psychotic and maybe he was right as I had been a virtual wreck of paranoia before we found we could calm each other's demons with presence alone.

The thing was that not everyone's presence could do that. No normal Preventor and absolutely not any civilian. Maybe it was alike to animal instinct. The predator keeping company with others of its kind and having to hunt all that's left?

I took a left turn, taking us out on the highway. Wufei was looking at the small palmtop that was scrolling a split screen of data and rotating images. But his eyes were so opaque I was almost certain he was thinking those too deep and involving thoughts of his again.

He was a predator too. Albeit one that seemed to have lost its track for a time but we were pack animals despite what J wished and it was no weakness that we had to kick him back in the right direction.

I couldn't help a chuckle and earn that even more amusing flash of near-exasperation from my fellow predator. But my amusement was easy to subside as that was followed by the blankness I hated.

Wufei was our Dragon, out fiery force of fucking nature that nothing could withstand, he was alive and bubbling with rage, the good kick, if painful, that got you moving when everything told you, you couldn't anymore.

To see him as I had these past months had been a near painful experience. But he was still undeniable when he drifted in and out of Headquarters like some bloody ghost.

He may have lost his path but that was so painfully obvious to a selected few individuals. Five of them that is.

Two were me and Duo, another was Une, who had used his drifting and crumbling resolve of life to her own ends.

But to everyone else things had been different.

I had seen how other Preventors stepped out of his way in the corridors, even if he didn't seem to notice, hurrying, bloodied from head to toe and with a riffle and a duffel over his shoulder and his sword in the other.

Everyone had noticed the 'eyes only' stamps on his mission recs and the secretarial staff being thus had not passed on on the gossip of the too young Chinese man who seemed to be reporting only to the highest command. The rumor was good and Wufei's natural aversion to company had gotten him one hell of a reputation in no time.

That reputation had been set in stone on the few occasions when he'd been assigned to a team.

One of the favorite 'ghost' stories of Preventrs' was of some mission he had allegedly gone on in one of the tropical problematic areas. The team had consisted of two 'new' Preventors, five ex-OZ and a team-leader that was ex-rebel forces. All of them except those two freshly graduated kids were tried and weathered veterans.

It would have been easy to dismiss this rumor if I hadn't hacked the system and found out that it was in fact even worse than the words of those terrified old-time soldiers.

It went to tell of a bad trap they had walked into. The forces out there were vicious – local people who had nothing to lose and some lack of basic human compassion, or in fact humanity. The horrors of their quick defeat in which they lost one of the newbies and subsequent imprisonment had forced two of the team into early retirement, one in part-time desk duty with a strange tick and whimper reaction when someone mentioned horses, and one more into permanent hospitalization in a mental hospital. The team leader had had a three-moth intensive course of counseling but he was simply not the same fierce man as before but barely a shell that seemed to be waiting for its final release.

All of them had stumbled and carried each-other to the rescue-chopper with deep physical and psychological wounds. Torture had been applied aplenty and not only to get information but for entertainment as well.

The only one who had walked fully under his own power had been Wufei. He was also the only one who had returned to active duty immediately apparently with only a few injuries and a little colder than normal – which would mean glacial to a normal human.

The team leader had gotten drunk enough to talk a few times. Some of the people who heard him first-hand also sought treatment.

Unlike them I wasn't scarred by the vivid explanations of why exactly agent Smith feared horses and had divorced his wife almost immediately, or why Stratz was banging himself against the walls in a padded cell with phantom electrical shocks bringing him to screaming agony and hallucinated running from a pack of bloodhounds. I had admitted that those rebels had a little too much imagination and too much free time but it had not surprised me, nor disgusted me.

The only part of the story I had really been listening to anyway had been when he'd talked of their escape.

Of how Wufei had had to choose between trading places with Smith or killing the one newbie they had left and he hadn't even blinked before walking over brusquely and snapping his neck. There was of course the part of where the poor kid had been little more than a vegetable after his own share of the 'fun', but to any military, anyone really, to do this without even a moments thought was apparently not human.

He'd broken the kid's neck in one move and then just stood there as if waiting for further orders while for the first time their captors looked back with surprise, something akin to fear and no laughter.

Apparently that had been the thing he'd been waiting for as in the next two minutes he'd killed nine men with his bare hands, drenching the room with blood, appropriated the couple of weapons, freed those present then had fucking stormed the base, killing indiscriminately. They'd gotten to the communications room and called for back up, blown a hole in the wall and escaped into the jungle.

Wufei had gone back, now in possession of his dao, and had come out with the last man ten minutes later, once again drenched in blood.

The usual Preventor uniform was green and beige. The remains of his had been a dark, almost black, brown where the green should have been and brownish-red in the beige.

I guess a picture of Wufei in that kind of uniform after witnessing him almost savagely kill, kill with the thrill of it obvious on his face, in his moves, would be enough to carry even trough a second-hand reiteration.

I wanted to see him like that.

Oh ,God, I wanted to see him blazing, and fierce and burning.

I could feel my breathing quicken to match my pulse and the distinct sensation of arousal in my abdomen.

My eyes flickered to Wufei, my mind conjuring the image, and caught him giving me a sideways look, that ended in my lap.

My hands tightened on the steering wheel a little. We didn't have time…he wasn't Duo…Duo who I can fuck up against the car, quickly burning us both and releasing the tension…

Fuck.

My eyes turned to look at the exotic profile, the dark hair, the figure tight with muscle and power and so much deadly potential.

I swallowed.

Wufei

I followed the revolving pictures on the handheld as Heero drove our inconspicuous car out of the city and onto the highway. I hadn't asked why we were going out of the city when Duo was doing last-minute pre-ops but I didn't need to. If I were to guess I'd say we were heading for a Window.

A Window is a specific location that has satellite covering during a pre-specified time. It was the way secret agencies who could afford their own communication satellites got undetected calls and data flows trough back before the war and in part during.

Following the war the Preventors had seized control over all known such satellites and the old Window system is now under control of it. But the thing about a Window, as well as any other technology is that it evolves and also if works it won't stay away from the hands of those willing to pay the price, for long.

In my missions for Une I'd come across a few ways the modern criminal world had abused the Window system. I'd seen it highjacked for months before anyone found out, besides me that is, but it hadn't been in mission specs so I hadn't told. Instead I had co-ridden the highjackers signal and used it for some less than legal ways of detecting particular individuals, out of Une's eye.

She had given me specific orders as to things like that – she was not to know but I was to use anything I could to complete the task or else.

The other way of creating a Window out of the government system was to launch your own satellite – something that you would put down as another harmless 'node' while you load it up with a Window system and hidden maneuverability enhancements. But that would need an insane amount of money as well as good connections.

There were few people on Earth or the Colonies who could fit those specifications.

Suspicion was a weak word to indicate the sudden thoughts that were filling my mind - a newer, fuller version of the reality of the happenings and plots surrounding me.

My eyes flicked to the side in a moment of irritation as it seemed Heero was entertaining himself.

Heero. Gods have mercy on me but even one simple look at him completely derailed my train of thought.

The…thing, that was brewing between me and the other two was almost frightening in its buildup. I fear put it into concrete words, I don't want to be wrong or turn it into something it's not so I am content in letting myself go with the moment as I had never before in my life.

I trusted them – the only people left alive whom I trusted. Yes, I had suspicions and was wary of them at times, but I would trust them with my life in the drop of a hat.

Because we were forged in the same mould of battle and fear and bloodlust, regret and pain and all those things that could not be put into words, the things that ravaged the landscape of my imagined inner self. That is why I would trust them with everything I am.

With my attention divided I could almost feel the tension building in my companion. I don't know what he is thinking about but it has to be damn exiting for him to be reacting this way.

Heavier breaths, eyes just a bit wider, the hands on the steering wheel gripping tighter. I could almost feel his arousal, feel my own breath latch onto the rhythm of his and my skin bring attention to even the finer details of everything it touched.

I couldn't help myself and looked sideways, catching his eyes for a second, a shot of pure hot fire exploding in my chest and streaking downwards and my eyes followed that direction confirming Heero's state.

I could practically feel his heavy gaze on me but I couldn't stop looking , having the sudden desire to …to what exactly?

I wasn't exactly worldly, nor had I had many lovers – none of which men. The thought cooled the fire in me somewhat and I lifted my eyes away.

After all this did I really want to go there? Entangle myself in a twisted version of a relationship with not even one but two men? Because there was no question that it was a package deal.

It was so strange. I had never found any real excitement in sexual things, not even sex itself, all this was so strange and …felt so right.

Goddamn it, I am no woman! What a new kind of weakness caused this insecurity?

I looked back needing those too dark blue eyes, needing to connect to their owner. And connect I did and the fire was back triple-fold, the car was veering sharply, breaks were screaming, the seatbelt bit into my chest.

Then the belt was gone I was engulfed in the heat of a heavy body suddenly over mine, my eyes closed and my lips became the focus of the fire inside me as another pair of possessive, fierce, lustful ones ravaged them.

Hands grabbed on with bruising force at both out bodies, roaming, desperate, needing, making quick work on buttons and belts and zippers. Lungs burned and lips parted for a second, heavy, hot breaths meshing as skin finally touched and the weight increased as Heero crawled over me, straddling my hips.

It was too much, too fast but I ignored that and instead attacked those bruised lips and pulled the body closer, grinding my released self against him. Damn it, how did he manage to get his pants off so fast?!

Wiggling, fighting for dominance, my own pants slid down my legs further and I just wanted more, wanted him closer, more, needed…

"More", he growled against my lips and I could only nod, not fully realizing what I was agreeing to.

Those large powerful hands dug into my skin and I must have made some sound as he swallowed the end of it, forcing his way into my mouth when I was too slow to open up. I didn't even notice that one hand had disappeared as he leaned over me, completely commanding, overwhelming.

But there was a change in the kiss, his mouth slackened a little, his hand over my shoulder almost drew blood on my back and I had to break the kiss to see… To see those lusty eyes narrowed and a hand disappearing behind him, a sudden presence of something sweet in the air.

"Hee…"

He didn't let me finish as in one move he lowered himself down and front, with a curve in his back, the hand from behind him landing on my throbbing erection and guiding it as he plunged down onto me.

The lights exploded and the air in my lungs suddenly seemed too heavy, everything centered on that one overpowering feeling of tightness and another's body against mine and _pleasure_.

Before I could get a breath back he was moving, drawing off me as much as he could and then slamming mercilessly down again. The power of his movements must have rocked the car hard but I didn't care as I raised a leg for better leverage and joined as much as I could in the small space. My hand was gripping his ass, pulling him back down, and it was better than anything I have ever felt. Brutal, lusty, with glazed Prussian blue eyes smothering above me.

His fingers were digging into my shoulders again, and in my delirious mind I saw flashes of his muscled-corded body unfolding and then bearing down again, a couple of small drops of sweat running down his chest , as the pressure in my build up and the movement became frantic, flesh slapping against flesh.

I might have broken skin as I grabbed onto him and my body arched, waves of fire spilling from me into him. Harder and longer than even before, as I fought against his resisting muscles for him not to move and shuddered.

I gasped the sex heavy air in the car as the waves of fire reseeded and I came back into my body again.

I breathed heavily as Heero pulled back a little but trough lidded eyes I saw him leaning back, felt his hot skin against mine again and finally focused on the dark-red erection that rose between us.

My hand moved somewhat lazily to it, wrapping around it, bringing a completely inappropriate shot of awkwardness trough me considering what we've been doing second before.

His whole body seemed to surge against my hand and he made the most captivating groaning sound as he pressed forward and rested his head on my shoulder, his breath hitting the side of my neck rapidly.

"Wufei", he didn't moan it but the way he said it almost re-lit my insides and my hand quickened its movement, awkwardness evaporating.

In fact I pushed him back and shoved him sideways onto the driver's seat, circumventing the clutch by lifting his leg to rest on the dashboard and crawling between his legs, briefly considering what I was about to do then just doing it before I talked myself out of it.

A hand buried itself in my hair, holding on with barely contained violence as I slowly took Heero in my mouth.

It was strange but thinking of what Heero had been doing just a minute ago spurred me on and I tried to remember what the only one of the women I had slept with and had given me blowjobs had done.

When I came up short as Heero's urgency rose I just gave up and improvised.

The taste was strange, alien but not bad and the sound of Heero going wild above me, the possessive hold of his hand on my hair, the small groans of pleasure made up for any discomfort.

"I'm gonna…"

He warned me and I released him from my mouth and pumped him until he spilled on my hand.

If there was one thing to be said about Heero coming it was that it was absolutely addicting. I'd seen it just twice now but damn if I wasn't already hooked.

It was like seeing Wing Zero rise from the ocean exploding from the water, the sun lighting him, shining off him, knowing that somewhere inside that metal body of perfection there was a small equally perfect boy, commanding it.

That's how I thought of Heero watching his orgasm , body arching, muscles straining.

It was a different kind of beautiful

A/N: Sorry for the short update but my muse is one of those old models that don't well at high speeds . 


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